I didn’t get to the trailhead until 1 pm and it was just pouring down rain. After 15 minutes of trying to talk myself out of it, I got out of the car and headed up the trail. Well, it’s not really a trail. It’s an old, abandoned forest service road that’s 90% rock. Wet rock makes for less than desirable traction and it took me damn near an hour to cover the first 3 miles two of which were mostly flat. Mile 2-3 was unreal at what I’m guessing was a 30% grade. My trekking poles came in might handy here with the wet rocks and all. The trail from here was unrelenting and makes Mt. Si seem like a joke. At a little over 3.25 miles, I began to hike in thick clouds though the rain had subsided. Once visibility got down to a few feet, I turned around probably only a couple hundred of feet or so from the snow line.

Aside from the miserable “trail” conditions, the solitude was wonderful. I saw 3 women with two dogs shortly before I turned around and that was it. I did see one mountain goat on a ridiculously perilous rock face but by the time I took of my pack to get my DSLR out, he wandered off the cliff and out of sight. There is some amazing virgin forest that was too dense to describe. Incredibly peaceful. The descent was incredibly difficult though and I almost fell on my ass innumerable times. My trekking poles saved me every time.

Unfortunately, the rain prevented me from taking out my camera so I didn’t get any good pics. I plan to return next Monday afternoon when I take a few week days off after our database migration is complete. If the weather cooperates, I’ll have bagged another peak and have some pictures to show for the effort.

Until I get my life back. Blood. Sweat. Tears. Literally. Bad luck. Good luck. It’s all there. This project has gone on for 13 months and has taken an incalculable toll on my life. And the lives of my team. But it will all be worth it. If we’re successful, nobody will notice. If we fail, well, some really bad things could happen for 250 employees. But we won’t.

I guess the things really worth having are never easy to come by.

Mt. Si is for wankers. Should be a fun way to let off some steam one week before the big RAC migration. If I survive, pictures will follow in my flickr gallery.

(Rattlesnake Ledge as seen from higher up on the Rattlesnake Mountain trail just before the storm rolled in.)

Halfway to the Rattlesnake Mountain trailhead on I-90, I noticed some pretty serious clouds hugging the mountains and decided to head back home for a raincoat. For once, I can say, “good call Michael” and not be sarcastic. I’d been to Rattlesnake Ledge about half a dozen times but decided to sweeten the challenge with a climb to the Rattlesnake Mountain East Peak (3,522 feet). Just before you reach the famous Ledge, a sign points to various, less traveled peaks on the mountain and I turned left to go to the East Peak.

The trail goes from about 8 feet wide to about six inches in a matter of feet but I was armed with a decent topo map and pretty fierce desire to reach the top of this mountain. Though it was clear and warm in Downtown Seattle, a pretty strong thunderstorm had rolled in on this mountain and at this elevation, all precipitation was in the form of snow and hail. I pushed on but worried in my head that the trail was narrow and everything looked the same. Instead of moving at around 3-4 mph, I (and I’m guessing here) slowed to about .5 mph. Every 20 feet or so, I had to ask myself, “is this the trail?” and I was blown away by how dense the forest was up there. I traversed blow down (a fallen tree in my path) after blow down and I began to doubt every step. About 40 minutes into uncharted territory, I came upon a serious blown down and couldn’t see where the trail resumed. I stepped up on the fallen tree that was probably thrice the age of my parents but still couldn’t see where I was supposed to go. The trees were so dense that I couldn’t look to the sky to make sense of my direction. So I stopped to pull out the map and I the pages I had scanned in from my guidebook.

I re-read the trail description and studied the map (no compass though). Just as I was ready to fold the packet back up, a huge clap of thunder almost knocked me off the massive log. By the time my heart rate had recovered to allow me to exist in the aerobic world, a huge cloud had rolled in and (I swear) two inches of hail had fallen. This new hail had completely, and I mean completely obscured what little trail existed. I could no longer see where I had come from or where I was supposed to go. Shit. Not cool. Thank God I brought this jacket I thought as I changed into it. In a few minutes, I was soaked and not feeling all that well. Food? check. Water? Check. Cell phone? Check. Calm, clear mind? Shit. “Ok, just stay calm and think this through”, I thought. But my legs were tired from the relentless climb and I knew I had less than two hours of daylight. I also knew that it was supposed to be clear out tonight meaning it would likely get VERY cold up on the mountain without shelter. One way or another, I had to find my way down. Since the mountain was so steep and I knew that the Cedar River Watershed was due east of Rattlesnake Mountain, I figured that I only needed to go down to reach civilization.

After about five minutes (that seemed like 120), I tried to retrace the path I had taken. I’m normally pretty good making mental markers but nothing looked familiar and the hail has falling hard enough to actually hurt. The cloud I was walking in had grown denser but I followed my instincts and tried to keep heading DOWN.

Then I came upon a blow down I thought I recognized. “FINALLY!” I actually screamed out loud. But a few feet later I ran into some brush so thick that I knew I hadn’t done through it. Dammit. So I retraced my steps (thanks to the two inch hail that had accumulated revealing my boot tracks) back to the place that I had started. I went left (east) instead of right and eventually came to a place that looked like a human had cleared debris (aka, a trail) and followed it. KICK ASS. One familiar turn led to another until I reached the sign just before the ledge. I let out an audible “whew!” and continued down the normal Rattlesnake Ledge trail.

Lessons learned? Buy and bring a decent GPS, it’s just not worth guessing when the technology exists to be precise down to the inch. Also, bring a compass. These things are like $30 and I took and orienteering course, learning how to use one. And finally, stay more calm. I handle stress at work much better than I handled it today. If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s staying calm during stressful situations. Cool heads always prevail. They do indeed.

Ok, this is probably the most pointless post ever but I can’t think of anything to write about today. I took this video about a month ago while working on a proof of concept for a video project I’m working on but don’t want to talk about just yet. The DV camera is mounted outside on the roof of my Saturn. This video is the route I take from my home garage to my garage in downtown Seattle, mostly on I-90. It’s at 30x speed and runs a little over 4 minutes. You can “scrub” or fast forward the video by pulling the slider to the right.

Folks, if you see that my web page looks wacky in Internet Explorer, please tell me. I only use Firefox (IE users should be, well, that’s just not nice to say on a family blog…) and IE doesn’t adhere to quite a few W3C CSS standards. This means that it may look fine for me in Firefox but the sidebar or title is missing in Internet Explorer.

(what it shouldn’t look like)

The sidebar disappeared recently because I had an image that was over 450 pixels in width which caused internet explorer to move the sidebar down to the bottom. The page looked fine for me however in Firefox and Opera. I’ll work on preventing this but if you see anything wacky, please drop me a mail or leave a comment. Thanks!