With geocaching friends, we just finished solving a bunch (50+) of puzzles that all revolved around the Doctor Who television series. It's supposed to be very hot tomorrow, but we decided to take a chance on the weather anyway. We won't make a dent on all the caches, but it will be fun to hike around Tiger Mountain and get started at least.
We met at 5:00 am at the Maple Valley park & ride and took one car to Tiger, hoping to escape the afternoon heat by covering a lot of ground early, before the sun got too high. The plan worked pretty well, until we got off trail to "save some time and steps." We've all done it; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't! Some of the trails weren't much better, so faint you could barely see them.
Our best reward was stellar views of Mount Rainier from the top of a clear cut. Then back into the forest for more bushwhacking.
Our plan abandoned us when we made a short detour down a steep trail to get a cache, then had to climb back up the hill. Not the wisest thing we'd done that day, and it nearly did all of us in. So we followed the trail back to a logging road, and opted to stay on the road back to the parking area. We were in and out of the sun, the temps were well over 90 degrees, and we were all miserable. We made it back with only a couple of incidents: DW had to lie down by the side of the road and let his back loosen up, and Shannon got hit with a migraine about half a mile from the car.
But we all made it. Back at the car, we rigged an ice pack for Shannon and opened up cold beverages for all of us, and cranked up the A/C until we all cooled down. We'd planned dinner and a beer at a local pub, but in the end, we figured that 14.5 miles of mostly steep hiking and 8+ hours in the heat was enough, and we just headed for home.
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