Although I was expecting to be hiking in Portland while the girls were at a baby shower those plans fell apart when the roads were deemed far too nasty to justify my late-Friday drive down. Instead, Tokul and I had the weekend to ourselves. So, Saturday morning Dan and I met at the local Starbucks (where else?) and then drove to the Little Si trailhead.
Eh? I thought this was Mt. Si! Relax, we'll get there.
After gearing up for what promised to be a wet and cold hike we got started and realized our crampons would be awfully handy. Thankfully, we actually had them with us. Just little four-point crampons, but the extra traction was very much appreciated. A little way up the Little Si trail we looked around to see if anyone was watching, then dashed off down a side trail. Behold, the old Mt. Si trail.
It's not signed. It's not maintained. It's probably not even legal. However, it's also not as heavily populated as the traditional Mt. Si trail which makes it all that much better.
The snow was pretty heavy for the first third of the climb. The trail snakes through the lowlands before beginning up at a brutal rate. After passing between a couple of enormous rocks/cliffs it's a pretty straightforward switchback climb to the junction with the main trail about a half mile below the Haystack basin.
Just to complicate things, though, the snow petered out around 2,000 feet so we had to stop to drop our crampons. We paused a bit more to give a guy on his way down some water since he'd run out, but then we were back in motion. Even the dogs seemed to slow down a bit on the steep trail.
Once we had rejoined the main trail we had to put the crampons back on in order to walk on the icy trail packed solid by hundreds of other hikers. While on the old trail we saw only three people. In our first few minutes on the main trail we saw as many and would see many more.
We got to the basin and picked a spot for lunch. The Haystack was out of the question given the snow and dogs so we relaxed for a half hour before getting ready to head back down. Unfortunately, somewhere on the way up I had actually broken one of the cleats off my crampons so I had slightly less traction heading down, but given the number of slides we saw others take I was still way ahead of the game.
We saw only three more people after dropping onto the old trail and before we knew it we were back on the Little Si trail and making the final descent. Unfortunately, that portion turned out to be especially icy and we had already taken off our fancy footwear so it was there, in sight of the cars and after more than six miles on the trail, that I hit the ground. So close.
