Tiger Mountain - March 2010

March 31, 2010

Sometimes, you just need to get outside. We have an ongoing goal of getting out for a hike at least once a month. We generally don't have any trouble meeting this, but March got kind of busy, we spent a lot of our free time biking, and the last day of the month found us yet to take a hike. So, after work we headed to Tiger Mountain, which is less than an hour from Seattle. We had to fight through some traffic to get across town, so the drive took longer than we had planned and by the time we stepped out on to the trail it was already 5:00.

I was starting to think this was a weak last ditch effort at a hike, but as soon as we headed down all the frazzledness and grumpiness of the month and the traffic and the rush to get out there fell away. We both commented on how much better we felt, and how glad we were that we had come. I guess it's part of our our primordial part past, but people just seem to feel better when they get a regular does of nature.

Tiger mountain isn't the craziest or most challenging or most impressive mountain in the area, but it still feels wild. Getting to the summit at 2,000 feet of elevation gain is nothing to scoff at, and the huge ferns and old trees that make up the forest make you feel like you are far away from everything. There are dozens of interconnecting trails, which is handy for curtailing your hike to your time constraints -- or just trying to make it back to the car before the sun goes down.

Since it was so late in the evening, we only passed a few other people. We didn't have any particular destination in mind and din't have enough daylight left to go too far anyway, so we just enjoyed being outside. We breathed in the forest, stopped to examined the giant moss-covered boulders, and watched the sky darken. We did a loop out of several segments of trails, and as we hiked along the powerline past Tradition Lake on our way back to the car the sun was setting behind us.