When I woke up this morning the sun was shining brightly through the window. By the time I had made and ate breakfast the sky was completely overcast. So I spent the better part of the morning farting around and wondering if I should put this cache off until next week sometime. The channel 4 weatherman said it wasn’t supposed to rain until the evening though, and we’d have high overcast until then. So I figured if I spent the day cleaning the house or doing some other stuff I really “needed” to do I would likely feel pretty bad about missing my opportunity to get a good hike in. By 10am I finally made up my mind and showered, made a lunch, packed, and put Tacoma in the rear view mirror. Damn I’m low on gas, should I stop? Nah, I want to make the summit and get back the parking lot before the rain comes, I’ll fill up on the way back.
I made the trailhead right at noon with an eighth of a tank indicated, and geared up. There were at least a dozen other cars in the parking lot. The hike up was uneventful, but there are lots of great views along the way. The two small waterfalls I passed would drown out the roar of I90 for a very brief moment. I worked up quite a sweat, especially when I got to the new part of the trail, it gets steep there. I arrived at the trail junction, one way is Mason Lake, the other to Bandera Mountain. So I went left towards Bandera. Where’s the trail? There’s a small goat trail but it’s paralleling the other trail towards Mason. About ten yards or so up the hillside I saw an orange ribbon tied to the brush. OK, that must be the trail, right? My route-finding sucks. After the ribbon there was nothing, so I just zigzagged straight up the giant hill until I reached the top. Guess what? There’s a trail. I followed the trail along the spine of the ridge to the summit.
I got to the top at about 2:15. The winds at the summit were blowing strong and cold, and I started to shiver a little. I tried to find a scramble route over to the other peak. There isn’t a trail, just a scramble of about half a mile (well, I don’t think there is a trail, but like I said….) The scramble made me a little uncomfortable since I was alone and nobody knew I was here, so I made the knock-it-off call and went back. This time I took the trail all the way to the junction. From there it was just a stroll back to the trailhead, getting there just as the rain started. I made it back to the truck at 4:10 and logged 7.1 miles RT. The truck made it to the gas station ($2.54 a gallon!).
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