Mt. Si via Boulder Garden Loop and Old Si Trail

Mt. Si - April 27th, 2014

Mileage: 8.4 miles

Elevation Gain: 3150 feet

Snoqualmie Pass - North Bend Area

Dog Friendly

Difficulty: Intermediate

Pass Required: WA Discover Pass

The pacific Northwest is a paradise for anyone who likes the outdoors.  From many locations in Washington, Oregon and British Columbia you can hop in your car any day of the year and have relatively fast access to an enormousness amount of different landscapes and biodiversity including snow capped mountains, the pacific ocean and sound, deciduous rain-forests and desert. 

One of the few problems you encounter in this region is snow in the mountains...  Snow that stays way into the summer months in many of the regions we like to hike.  I'm sure if you grew up or spent any time in a mountainous region, you probably wouldn't be surprised to run into a trail that was impassable because of snow coverage in July, but having grown up in the South, I still have a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that I have to worry about snow in the summer.

Because of the snow, many of our favorite mountain hikes don't open up until very late in summer, which means we are left with very limited options when we want to do a hike with any elevation gain.  One of these options is Mt. Si which is mostly clear of snow, except at the very top, quite early in the season.  This was the third time I've taken the hiking group up Mt. Si already this season.  Luckily, there are three different ascent options for this particular mountain.  On our latest hike we decided to take the old trail which is no longer maintained and much more difficult and technical than the newer trail.

The old trail ended up being difficult enough that about halfway through the hike, I was starting to wonder if I was going to scare some of the members of the hiking group away from future hikes!  This was the second consecutive hike we did that weekend and most of the members who attended the first hike at Rattlesnake Ledge also came to this hike.  As a result, some of the members who haven't been hiking as much this season, as well as some who have, were completely exhausted by around mile 3.  The weather was also challenging on everyone's moral.  It started raining almost immediately after we arrived at the trail-head and the rain proceeded to turn into snow as the temperature dropped below freezing  at about 3000 ft.

Luckily everything ended up being OK in the end. We took lots of breaks, had some food and slowed the pace down significantly and everyone was able to make it to the summit in one piece.  Everyone was so tired by the time we reached the summit that we made a group decision to take the newer, well maintained trail on the way down.  The only downside of this option was that by taking this trail we would arrive at a parking lot that was 2 miles away from where our vehicles were parked.  We decided I would either walk to get one of the cars or hitchhike.  I ended up walking which increased my total mileage for the day to 10.4.  Lets just say I slept like a baby that night!

Overall it was a very difficult, but still very enjoyable hike.  I was quite pleased with the reactions of everyone I hiked with after we were talking about the hike a few days later.  The group consensus was that we need to train more rather than do easier hikes, a sentiment that mirrored what I was thinking.