West Tiger Summit 5/23/2003

With Nuria on vacation starting today and Dan not wanting to hike after work, I am hiking alone again today. A year or two ago, this would have meant no hike for me. Now it means I get to hike alone. I kinda like the solitude. While I in no means wish to imply that I do not like to hike with others, I find the alone time with my thoughts really nice.

There was next to no one on the trail today. I think I passed less than a dozen people over the whole trip. That is very unusual from my experience on West Tiger. It was nice.

One thing that is important to remember about this trail is that there is a lot of bugs. Using a bug repellant is a must. I keep bug repellant in by backpack so this is not a problem for me, but if I did not, I think my dried husk would have been found about 1/2 way up the mountain. All blood removed from mosquitoes.

First thing I noticed about West Tiger is that it is noticeably steeper than Mount Si. I was impressed at how it only rarely lets up from the steepness. It redeems itself as a trail in that it is fairly even (no large obstacles like roots, rocks, etc. to step over) and that it is only 2.5 or 3 miles to the top. When I hike this trail I park at the parking area for cable trail and then walk the 1/2 mile or so to the West Tiger 3 trail head. It is a good warm-up/cool-down for the hike and it adds another mile to the walk.

I made it to the top in just under 2 hours. I felt good all the way up, I did not loose energy before the summit like on Mount Si. This is a good thing. Also, with the added steepness of the trail, I think this is a great between hike workout. It has no great views from the top, but you can feel the workout.

I did not take off my pack at the top, I looked around. There were some paragliders in the distance (they did not show up in the pictures unfortunately). I snapped a few pictures and then turned around about 5 minutes later. The hike down was uneventful.

I got back to my car feeling great! was still not out of energy at all. Round trip time was 3.5 hours. This is a great after work hike and one I plan to do 3 days a week weather permitting. My goal for West Tiger is to cut my round trip time down by 30 minutes by the end of June.

Since I will be hiking this a lot, I don't plan to put a hiking report every time I do this. I may put up a report when something significant happens or on a special occasion.

Here are the pictures from the trip: