[The Angry Hiker]

Hiking with B-Dog is like taking a slow boat to China. It's not that he's a slow hiker, mind you. It's just that it takes him so damn long to get to the trail. Saturday's planned Chikamin climb was no exception. First we had to run to Safeway so he could get some trail food. Safeway wasn't open yet, so it was off to Fred Meyer. After Freddie's, we had to stop at Starbucks for coffee and a breakfast burrito. Three hours later, we were finally on the road. Don't get me wrong. I didn't complain - but the burrito did, and by the time we reached Snoqualmie Pass, B-Dog was hunched over the wheel and groaning like the fat chick from Precious was about to burst out of his colon. "I don't feel so good," he wheezed. His stomach made a strange gurgling sound as if to punctuate his statement, followed by a loud, wet pop, like a rubber balloon full of fudge pudding being shot out of the rusty tailpipe of a 1964 Plymouth Belvedere. "I need to get to a restroom, pronto!" Thus began our grand, Homeric odyssey for the mythical Golden Crapper. On second thought, I'm going to do everyone a solid and just flash forward to the trailhead. Suffice it to say that B-Dog won't be welcome back at the Last Resort Cafe any time soon. We arrived at the Mineral Creek at a crisp, early 10 am and B-Dog bounded up the trail like someone who had just miraculously dropped 30 pounds.

Trailhead

It was only a few hundred feet later that the theme of this trip report officially changed from B-Dog's digestive issues to OBNOXIOUS TRAIL FLAGGING.

Every 5 or 10 feet there was a bright orange ribbon attached to a tree limb with a reflective clothespin. I'm use to the occasional, errant snow marker, but these things were everywhere. The WTA was probably up to their usual villainy, but this level of "trail improvements" was ridiculous even for them.

Remember this photo

I've been a little hesitant of kicking down cairns and messing with trail markers ever since I was blacklisted by SAR, but we must've yanked down a good 30 or 40 of the damn things before the mystery of their origin was finally solved.

It's a Douchebag-a-thon!

Trail runners! The scum of the earth. The lowest of the low. On a scale of subhuman depravity, I'd put trail runners a few notches below poodle herders and toilet paper florists. They're generally rude, inconsiderate, and everything has to come to a screeching halt so they can prance through in their slightly effeminate polyester running outfits and hydration packs filled with lemon-scented Acqua-Panna imported straight from Tuscany. One or two trail runners on Mount Si is bad enough. We were directly in the path of a veritable douchebag stampede. We mulled it over and agreed that the best thing to do at this point was to push on up to Park Lakes, set up camp, and pray the Jerkwad Festival wouldn't begin until we were well up Chikamin.

Pushing on

But a couple of miles or so later, we started to get the sinking feeling that we were on another Summitpost snipe hunt.

Beautiful Park Lakes

"I don't remember this lake being here before," B-Dog announced. Well, I was pretty sure it had been there before. I just doubted that he was. We must've been so pre-occupied with griping about the flags that we missed a fork or something back down the trail.

A disgusted B-Dog

The Magic Doo Dad Holds No Answers

If only there was some item, some sort of essential we could've brought along to show us where the heck we were. Oh well. We put our heads together again and decided that the best thing to do at this point would be to go ahead and get drunk.

Camp

Waterskiers enjoying Park Lakes

Park Lakes

Park Lakes

Park Lakes

Park Lakes

Park Lakes

Sunset on Chikamin

We put down a couple bottles of Jim Beam and enjoyed dinner to the soothing sounds of speed boats and machine gun fire on the ridge. Thankfully, everything had quieted down by sunset and we hit the sack. It takes me a while to fall asleep when I'm camping, and then any little squirrel fart will wake me up. So the sounds of laughing women - (or it could've been men, it's hard to tell with trail runners) jolted me right out my sleeping bag. A huge group of trail runners jogged right by the camp, laughing and carousing, oblivious, or simply not caring that there might be sleeping campers on a mountain lake in the middle of the night. Every 5 or 10 minutes, as I was just starting to drift back to sleep and return to sweet dreams of plowing through a group of trail runners in an old Plymouth Belvedere, another group of laughing jerkwads would blow in and wake me right up. And of course every time I woke up, I had to pee. So I had that going for me. This went on ALL NIGHT LONG and didn't let up until after the sun rose the next morning.

B-Dog looking towards the path of the TRD's. One can actually be seen sneaking through the brush on the lower right.

B-Dog tries to push some of my buttons with a morning cairn

We spent the morning ranting and raving over the night's insanity, tossing an occasional bird at any stragglers that happened by, then packed up and headed out.

Screw you, Park Lakes!

We both had our suspicions as to how we could miss the correct trail to Chikamin, and they were confirmed when we arrived back at the area where the Trail Running Douchebags had gone nuts with the flagging.

correct trail

strange vials of urine that the TRD's had hung everywhere during the night.

All the flagging had been removed, but some of the refuse they had piled on the trail remained. We cleared out all the debris and the Park Lakes Trail has now been officially re-opened for lowly hikers. The remainder of the morning was spent gathering tree ribbons, dropping F-bombs, and vowing to never politely move aside for another Trail Running Douchebag again.

The morning's bounty

I'll put these in an ammo box as soon as I find one

[HumpnoocheeGirl]

Bahahaha

[MLHSN]

You should have crashed the party at the finish line. Don't you know they always have a few kegs waiting? In all sincerity, I'm amazed you brave the west side masses. You sound much more like an eastside curmudgeon. Leave the land of the poodle herders and toilet paper florists behind. You won't regret it!

[olderthanIusedtobe]

I take TAH for a not happy unless he's pissed off kind of guy. If he hiked where there were no people, he'd have nothing to complain about and he wouldn't be able to write TR's. And we would all be much the sadder for it. So please continue to hike trails with many hikers, poodle herders, litterbugs, etc., for the entertainment and merriment of all at NWH.

[Ski]

you could have gotten a long ways away from I-90 in that three hours.

[coho]

An instant classic. Great TR.

[Gil]

I woke up this morning almost as angry as TAH, but then I read this, the best trip report of the summer. The Plymouth Belvedere is a particularly sweet touch.

[RichardJ]

Another great TR. Thanks for cheering me up on this rainy morning AH. The Sunset on Chikamin pic is priceless.

[Sean T]

Sadly I stared at the pee viles for a few mins trying to figure out how they got the pee in EM before I relized they were lights

[Backpacker Joe]

TAH is obviously krazie.

[mike]

[boot up]

Thank Gawd it was TAH that said this about trail runners. If any other of us had said this, we we be shot down in flames. What really gets me about trail runners is this latest fad of descending on trails by the hundreds, surprising hikers that expected a nice stroll down a quiet moderately populated trail. And just try to figure out what trail is going to be mobbed next, while planning your hike. There does not seem to be a single easy place to check if your planned hike is going to be the next trail runner mob scene.

[fourteen410]

FWIW, the Cascade Crest is a pretty grueling endurance run. From my understanding, every runner is required to do a day of trail work prior to the run as well.

[The Angry Hiker]

I don't know how "grueling" it could be when they are traipsing through my camp at 2 am, giggling and laughing like a bunch of giddy schoolgirls. And they should make them do the trail work AFTER the run so they can pick up all their damn crap.

[fourteen410]

They probably just wanted your autograph