Search and Rescue needs work too

So I have missed the last two weeks and I will try to encapsulate all three hikes here.

Starting with two weeks ago we did Poo Poo point again after a several week break. I have to say, compared to when we began this adventure, it was a piece of cake. We powered up in record speed and I never once felt like I was going to pass out or vomit. That may not sound like a big deal to most of you out there but for me it was HUGE. Not only did I power up like I knew what I was doing, I wasn't dead last. For the first time I was smack in the middle of the pack, and that was the best feeling so far. We raced up to the usual kinda anti-climactic peak, and since we had time left we went down to the actual Poo Poo Point view point over Issaquah. It was gorgeous, we really should have been going there the whole time.

Last week we decided to do the Golden Gardens stairs again. After the huge success of our previous week I figured we could tackle the stairs easy as pie. Boy I was wrong. We were loaded up with our packs and made a plan for 6 rounds. There is nothing easy about 288 stairs with a full pack on. Johnny counted the stairs and Joe counted in the neighborhood of 560 individual foot falls between the stairs and the flat sections one way. With an average of 5-6 inches it was in the range of 3500 feet of elevation gain and loss. Not only was the height and weight troublesome but stairs are so much harder than a steep trail. A much much harder press on the legs.

Now we come to this week. We decided to go on Friday because John and I were both off and with Easter it just made sense. We had a new addition to our team this time, an old friend of ours Ben tagged along. It was a great to have him along. Not only to spend time with him again after a long hiatus but having a new person in the mix is always nice. We set off from Johns for Tiger Mountain again. The very fact that we made it out the door was a minor miracle. It was pouring rain and the snow level was low enough (1500') so the chances of running into snow was extremely high. The best part of the beginning was as we were reaching the trail head there was a cop in a patrol car who flagged us over to find out what our plan was. We talked briefly and he tried to dissuade us from heading up. He knew it was going to be nasty and really didn't like the idea of us falling off a snowy cliff. As we said our good bye's he said the funniest statement of the whole day, "hey, Search and Rescue needs work too.".

We headed up and the weather really wasn't messing around. Never through our entire day was it not raining, messy messy rain. Like our last Poo Poo Point trip it was a ton easier as we went. We kept in a pretty good pack, no major gaps, well that was until Joe had a boot issue. His new boots were pinching on his heal and the closer we got to the top we eventually had to stop so he could change into his old hiking shoes. After that it was smooth sailing through a flipping blizzard to the top. As we crested it was snowing like a banshee and windy as hell. The original plan was to eat some hot food up there and take a nice break. But the wind blew us right off and we bailed on the food idea and headed down.

As with the ascent we raced down. It felt so good to make such incredible time. The hellish snow and wind helped. At the bottom we rewarded ourselves with big bowls of Beer Cheese soup at the Issaquah brew house. That stuff is like hikers crack.