[Alan Bauer]

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2003 - LITTLE MOUNT SI I left home for a day of photography fully depressed about the weather. Yet again my day free to work and mother nature was beating me up! It was raining so hard. My plans actually were to head to Vantage and hike in fresh snow in the desert. Alas, snow was packed on I-90 from Tinkham Creek all the way well past Easton and Taneum areas. So not feeling like wasting 1/3 of my day going snow through 40-50 miles of snow I stayed put, slowly driving around the upper Snoqualmie Valley in the downpour of the morning, getting coffee...what to do? Maybe I'll just car-photography work today so I can keep the gear somewhat dry. Upon hitting North Bend it let up to a drizzle. Hmmmm...my backup plans of multiple Issaquah Alps peaks was still in the back of my head. I went for it and headed to Little Si and when I arrived at 9:50am the rain STOPPED! I've not hiked Little Si for at least 10 years and thus had not even seen the new trailhead parking area access. Wow. And...empty. The first 1/4 mile really gets the heart going to gain the elevation to tie in to where the old trail comes in. I felt like I was returning to a warm comfortable place when I got to the moss covered rocks and tress of the forest in the saddle area. The rock cliffs....mossy trees...quiet....it was a pure joy of photography with the cloudy day in the forest! My only humans today was a high school group of 8 guys heading up. They blew by as I was photographing mossy scenes...and blew back down in the downpour of late morning. Did I say downpour? Well I was blessed in only having 35 minutes of my day hiking in rain, but in those 35 minutes the meteorological part of me guesstimates it rained at least 11.83 inches!! I can honestly say I haven't hiked in rain like that for years, if ever. My summit time on Little Si was during this time as well, and my time on top was all of about 32.7482 seconds. Why stick around? No views to photograph and no cover of trees from the rain! I swam back down and marveled at the memories of "hey, I don't recall switchbacks heading up here". The trail to the top has to have been rebuilt in the last 10 years since my last scramble up. Rains stopped as quickly as they had started and I hiked on out. I had more plans for the day....wanted to use all of the daylight! I enjoyed seeing many nice sized flocks of golden-crowned kinglets in the maple thickets. A raven grumbled through the forest. And moss dripped....and it was good. This Little Si trail has to be one of the LEAST affected trails from last weeks windstorm. Only one down tree to walk under. It makes sense as this is sort of "around the corner" from the path of most intense outflow winds. There, I ruined it---all of humanity will flock here this weekend due to no windfall to deal with, a fair length hike, and elevation too! Before leaving the neighborhood I went out to do a trailhead check on Mount Si and Mount Tenerife trailheads. My rig was alone when I left Little Si, but still Mount Si had 15+ cars. Tenerife was empty too. Amazing---those Mount Si people all go past Little Si still, leaving me to myself. I shot all slides today to keep the main digital SLR at home from the wet...but I did pull out an old P&S digital camera from a baggie to shoot a few images on the hike out. Will update some photos when slides come back in a week.... Next stop: Across the way at the Iron Horse State Park by Rattlesnake Lake, and Cedar Butte called! Alan L. Bauer 12/12/2003