Second trip to Mt. Si
Boy, what an adventure I had a week back. I usually take the metro bus on my hikes, and that gives me a lot of room for adventure (doing funny things so as to not miss the last bus for example).But bus adventures aside, hiking is always an adventure. This time I made it to the top (not the haystack) in 1hr 50 mins, which is pretty amazing, for me atleast. I paced myself steadily over the climb - a total of 4 miles. The first 3 miles were decent, the last 1 mile was a killer. 4miles and 4000ft, that's some climb.
After getting to the 4 mile mark from where you get a good view of mountains nearby, I decided to go to the top of haystack, a very steep monolith, from where a slip could mean death. The climb to the top was itself very steep and my heavy bag of supplies didn't help me. I decided to ditch the climb, when I was half-way through to the hay-stack...this gives me another opportunity to come back to Mount Si.
Over all it was 15 miles of hiking + climbing in around 6 hrs.. phew. And the last 20 minutes, I was running at a steady 8:00 minute/mile pace so as not to miss the MT 209 bus at 8:43pm from North Bend.. talk about adventures..this was one till the very end. This hike really gave me a feel for endurance hiking. I took a lot of supplies including cookies, fruit juice, and 1.5lts of water.
I will post one or two pics maybe. My next hike would probably be next weekend to Rattle snake lake, again a long hike of around 15 miles (round trip).
A video I took near the top: