The 40,000-foot milestone

Wilson and I made another milestone today, passing 40,000 feet of elevation gain by 131 feet. This puts us more than halfway toward the objective of 70,000 feet ascended by the time we take on Mount Adams next summer. We did it by once again ascending Mount Si, the prominent mountain by I-90 at North Bend, WA,  that draws between 80,000 and 100,000 hikers every year. It rained all the way up and down. If we hike one more Mount Si, we also will have earned our Third “Rainier,”  (3 x 14,409-foot elevation of Rainier = 43,227 feet.)

And at this time, 65 One World Futbols have been purchased, putting us just shy of two-thirds of our goal of 100 balls purchased by next July. While we were in Maui for our Haleakala hike, the most recent five balls were purchased.

We’d like to thank the donors who have supported our effort to date. So here goes: Thank you! Thank you very much.

One of the first things we noticed on the hike is that some trees have been toppling during the winter months. Wilson checked out this particular log, which broke off from the top of a nearby tree,  and then snapped in two when it hit the ground. 

This reminds me of a question that Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers, asked on the NPR public radio program, Car Talk: 

If a man is walking through a forest, and he says something, and his wife isn’t there to  hear him, is he still stupid? 

I don’t know whether this tree made a sound when it hit the ground, but I’m glad it didn’t hit me. As for Wilson, it obviously wouldn’t have phased him. But you knew that, didn’t you?

At the end of the day, on the way down, this log was being chain-sawed into sections by a couple of park employees. The sawdust was so bright it looked like there was sunlight on the trail. Silly me, the overcast never broke. Sorry, I forgot to shoot that photo.

To the right is another picture of a fallen tree that broke up into sections after it split off its trunk. You can see the surviving portion up the hill in the background.

You can’t see it clearly in the photo below, but there’s a thin sheet of water working its way over the steps where Wilson is resting and on down the trail. Following Wilson up the path was almost like hiking in a stream bed. On the way down the mountain, the water gathered into rivulets,  then into streams and finally into a pretty healthy brook by the time we got back to the parking lot.

The photo below shows Wilson taking a break at an area I call "the snack bar.” This is as far as I got the first time I tried Climbing Si. It's only about a third of the way to the top. It’s a good place to stop, swill some liquid and chow down on a snack.

I think of this log in the photo below as “the bannister.” The roots running along its length are handy to grab onto when you are climbing up or down the rocky steps there, which tend to get slick with mud and water at this time of year.

When Wilson reached this three-mile signpost, we had been hiking for about two and a half hours. That’s pretty slow. Part of the reason we were slow was stopping to take photos in the rain, and also talking to people along the path about our fund raiser. Several people showed interest. We’ll presume they followed up if we see the numbers go up.

At 3.5 hours we finally made it to what I believe is called the Haystack Basin – the part of the trail where many people stop, take a breather, congratulate themselves for “making it,” and then turn around and head back down. You can climb up those boulders in the photo below and gain a little more altitude. The really intrepid hikers climb the “Haystack” at the top, but it’s a bit dicey and you can injure yourself effortlessly if you’re not careful. Wilson opted to just get under a rock to avoid the rain. 

We made it back down in 2.5 hours. I think we would have made better time, but I slowed Wilson down a bit because of a bit of pain in my left knee. I felt a cramp coming on in my left quad during the ascent, so I found the part that hurt and did some heavy massage. That prevented the cramp, but I think it freed up the muscle to aggravate its connection to my knee on the way down. Is that arthritis? The same knee hurt a couple years ago and cleared up, so we’ll see.

When we got back to the car, I was thoroughly soaked (why did I wear a cotton hoodie, along with a cotton sweatshirt?) and so was the interior of my backpack, and the kerchiefs and sweatbands and other materials inside. The good news was that it was a warm rainy day. 

Even the kid from Idaho who was hiking up the trail with only a wet T-shirt on his torso was probably going to do all right – although I asked someone farther down the trail to take him one of my extra emergency lightweight survival blankets, just in case.

The better news is that getting to 70,000 feet is going to be easy as cake. Or should I say it will be a piece of pie? 30,000 feet more is only 10 more Mount Si’s. I could do Si once a week and meet goal. But that’s a little too boring. Wilson and I are going to have to dream up something else.

Till next time,

Robert, and
Wilson