[Foist]

After a good productive day of studying, I snuck out for a close-by evening hike. I chose my favorite close-to-seattle summit hike, Red Mountain. It was the first trip with my OM-1 since I had it all cleaned out and fine tuned (at a place recommended by a few folks in the Photo section of this site). I can't wait to see how the photos turned out. I might get them tomorrow, I have to see if I have time. So no pics quite yet, but a funny story (Warning: rated PG-13 for strong language; parental guidance is advised): I started up the trail at 5:15 pm and turned onto the old "abandoned" Commonwealth Basin trail. It's the most unabandoned abandoned trail you'll ever see. It's in great shape, considerably better shape than many solid green lines on the map. For those who haven't been on it, start out on the PCT, and right after the "most difficult" (ooooooooooh) sign, there's what looks like (and probably is) an old road-dwindled-to-trail on your left. Turn there; this seamlessly turns into the old Commonwealth trail. It's a full mile shorter than taking the PCT, and it's prettier, goes near the creek a lot, and has less highway noise. Even if I was going to Kendall Katwalk I'd take the old trail, then backtrack a bit at the junction. ANYWAY, soon after I turned onto the old trail, I ran into an older man with a very old pack and a kind of goofy white hat with a loooong white bill. I said with a smile, "Heey, this trail's abandoned!" Without responding at all to my hilarious joke, the odd looking man said, "Not far up there, there's a bird who chirps kind of like this." He chirped, and continued: "After he chirped, he came down and SWOOPED at me, just barely missing my head. He did this a couple of times. Maybe some kind of falcon. Just watch out for him!" I thought, uh huh, whatever dude, but thanked him and moved on. As sometimes happens to me when I start out too fast, I got tired quickly and had to stop for a bit not long after that. I heard some chirping, not entirely unlike what the man had described. I ignored it, and started drinking some water. Suddenly I heard a whoosh, a SQUAWK, and felt a THUMP! on the head. It didn't hurt, and he didn't scratch me; it was kind of like getting bopped on the head with a small, firm pillow. It scared the bejeesus out of me. I yelled, "AAAHHH! F***ER!!!" Then he started the chirping again. Recalling my Hitchcock, I grabbed my stuff and RAN up the trail until I didn't hear the chirp. About halfway up, I realized I didn't have my sunglasses, which were perched on my head when I started. I realized it was that f***er bird. Oh well, just a cheap drug store pair. I turned off onto the rugged boot track to head to the top of Red Mountain. I took it from where it meets the trail while the latter is side-hilling, not long before it hits that flat area. This was actually the first time, out of 4 trips, that I succeeded in following the boot track -- not much of a trail, anyway, really, but probably the best route -- all the way to the top. Every other time I've gotten stuck on the cliffs to the left. While I was laboring against the red cliffs under the still-hot sun, I noticed that a group of guys was not far below me. They caught up to me. they were going pretty fast, and I was having one of my occasional bouts of trail-nausea, probably from not enough salt (I force-fed myself some salty nuts, and it got better). They are TNAB, the Thursday Night After Burners. One of them, actually, knew me from this site: Mesahtchee Mark. Hi man (if you're reading this)! I hung out with them on the summit, they were a fun group, very funny guys. Suddenly, one of them turned to me and asked, "Hey, you didn't happen to lose a pair of sunglasses, did you?" I said, why yes, and told them about the F***er Bird (I don't know what he is, but that's my name for him). They were amused. Also, close to the top, we saw a mountain goat! First time I've seen one in that area. In fact, first time I've seen one off I-90 at all. I only saw him for a second, but he was gorgeous. Those things are amazing. After hanging out up there and getting attacked fairly heavily by skeeters (NOTHING like Polallie Ridge on July 4 though) for probably too long, we headed down, headlamps handy. No encounters with F***er Bird. Footnote: In addition to the skeeters, on the way in there were actually some BITING FLIES at the parking lot and on the ridge leading up to Red Pond/pass area. I guess we've reached that time of year. Sigh.

[markq]

Yes, it's an old logging road. That was obvious when i hiked up there with my parents in the 1960's but you can hardly tell that now. It seems as though the forest service must have put a lot of effort into cutting all the blowdowns to make the old trail passable a few years back, yet it's still classified as abandoned, strange. I usually go that way too as it's shorter and not much steeper than the PCT, or make a loop. I was divebombed by an owl on a different hike. Wondered what had just hit the top of my head, looked around and didn't see anything then was hit again. When I looked up the second time I saw this big owl coming at me. I grabbed a stick and went on my way as fast as I could.

[Mesahchie Mark]

Hey, Foist: Good meeting you up there! It was cool to see that goat - big sucker, too. Hopefully some of the pics will turn out - I'll post a link to the TNAB once they're up.

[Foist]

Finally, some pics from this one. (I kinda got side tracked by the Bar Examination...)