I have to say that so far 2004 has been the best year of my life. I had my weight loss surgery just over a year ago and 100 lbs lost so far. I learned to ski (I even got my first ski injury). I snowshoed again. I have been hiking quite a bit. Life is indeed good!

My original plans were for Mount Si today but it was such a nice warm sunny day that I knew Mount Si would have just under the entire population of the Earth on it. Somehow sharing a trail with Six Billion other people did not seem like fun. Technically, I don't mind all the people on the trail, it is the three billion at the top that I find a problem.

To combat the overcrowding, I decided to do the 3 peaks of Tiger Mountain. This hike I went with Robert. Robert and I have never went hiking together before but we have hung out several times and we skied together several times this winter.

The day started out on a bad note, I slept in. I was 15 minutes late picking Robert up, but that was not the big deal. The big problem was I was really sleepy... *sigh*

The hike started off as normal. We made decent time on West Tiger 3. About 1/3 of the way up, I was starting to feel pretty tired. Had I been hiking alone, I would have turned around at this point and called it a day. I love to hike and I don't want to ever associate hiking with a death march. I was not, however, going to drag Robert out for the hike only to turn around in 30 minutes. We slowed the pace down a bit and continued. I dragged on all the way to the top of Tiger 3, but then I was fine.

We only briefly stopped at Tiger 3 and then went on West Tiger 2 to Tiger 2. It looks so much farther away than it is. I think it is about a 15 minute stroll and there is almost nobody on this trail. It is quite nice!

From here, we wanted to go onto Tiger 1, but did not know where the trail was. We followed a road for a couple miles until there was a turn off up the mountain. We took that road to the top of the mountain and it was indeed Tiger 1. We found it!

From here we took a trail back towards the road. It did save us from losing so much elevation on the way back to Tiger 2. The tail is not used often and it was faint in places. Isis, being the ultimate trail dog kept us in the trail. We made it to the road with no problem and made quick work back to Tiger 2.

From here we took the 15 minute hike through the woods to Tiger 3. Maybe 100 to 150 yards from Tiger 3 there is a small offshoot trail. You can see big cement blocks here. The view is well worth stopping for. It was probably the best view of the day.

From Tiger 3 we took Cable Trail down the mountain. Cable Trail is very steep and has a lot of loose rocks on it. I have never hiked far on it before today. At one point, slipped and fell and dropped my cell phone. I did not notice this at the time and proceeded down the mountain. Luckily I only got about 60 yards or so before I noticed and only had to hike that far back.

This is the point where I saw that Isis was completely dragging. I told Robert I was going to split off Cable Trail at the next junction because I knew there was water on West Tiger 3 Trail. We made it to water and Isis must have drank for 5 minutes. While she never perked up totally, you could tell she was definitely better.

Another 20 minutes and I was back at the car, eight and one half hours after starting. It was a lot of fun. The pace was slower, the conversation was good, the day was excellent, and the dog finally got to lay down!

Here are the pictures from the trip:

Near Tiger 3 Summit looking back at Mount Si	Near Tiger 3 Summit looking at Tiger 2 Summit	Near Tiger 3 Summit looking at I-90	Tiger 3 Summit looking at Issaquah
All the people on Tiger 3 Summit	Tiger 3 Summit looking at Mount Rainier	Best view... looking West South West	Best View... looking South
Best View... looking South again	Robert and Isis on Tiger 2