Trip report - West Tiger #3
I set off to do my first conditioning hike of the year today, rain or snow. Good thing too, since I got both. The initial plan was to do the West Tiger 3-2-1 trail via the Section Line trail. Good time to test the better fitting mountaineering boots, as well as my trekking poles, which I'd not actually used. I threw in a majority of the stuff I'd end up having on my longer backpacking trips, and ended up with a starting pack weight of 40Lbs. I'd like to move up to 50-55Lbs for the conditioners, but I'm definitely not able to handle that yet.
Hit the trail around noon after a miserable drive there. I forgot to take my cell out of the car, so I have no idea how long it took me to get to any of the waypoints. Due to weight reasons and crappy weather I left the camera at home, so no pictures. (Tiger isn't a very photogenic trail anyways, and the summits don't have a view when its overcast)
Started off on the Nook trail to get used to the weight. (0.9 miles, 560' elevation gained). I could tell already I'm not in as good of shape as I hope, but still way better than I feared. I also didn't consider that these boots were pretty much straight out of the box, so I started getting hotspots almost immediatly when I started heading up the hill. A rather wet log made a great place to throw some moleskin on, then keep plugging along.
At the top of Nook trail, there's a more or less flat 0.3 mile run on the Talus Rock Trail, before Section Line veers off to the left. I wanted conditioning, and I got it. The trail is STEEP, I mean Mailbox Peak steep. It basically goes straight up the side of West Tiger (switchbacks? Who needs switchbacks). Length: 0.9 miles, 1402' elevation gained) I hit the halfway intersection with The West Tiger Railroad Grade at about 1pm, which seemed pretty reasonable. (A nice lady with a fancy altimeter watch traded me the time for use of my topo map to recalibrate her altimeter) The rain turned to snow around 1600', and I started to see accumulation on the ground around 1700' or so. By the time I got the summit, the trail was hardpacked snow about 4-5" deep. The snow was getting worse, and I hadn't ever hiked the trail before, so I decided not to move on to the #2 and #1 summits. Maybe if I weren't solo and had some familiarity, but I'd already done the hard part anyways.
I planned to switch to the main West Tiger 3 trail for the way down, but ended up heading out via the Cable Line trail instead (and this is why I didn't want to go further to #2). Cable Line crosses the West Tiger trail not far down, so I realized my mistake and switched back to the main trail. Its a bit longer, but much less steep, which was nice, I didn't want to try to go back down Section Line without any sort of traction device, which I'd left at home. A quick 2.5 miles and I was back at the parkig lot.
Total time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Total mileage RT: 4.6 miles
Total elevation gained: 2000'
Reality check:
I definitely need more of these. Heading out to the Yakima area next Saturday with The Mountaineers for some off trail hiking that's estimated to be about 7 miles and 2000', so that'll be a nice followup
Trekking poles are great, especially when you run into unexpected snow.
No one section of Wonderland is near as difficult as Section Line. That makes me pretty optimistic about my ability to finish that 95 mile monstrosity.
Unfortunatly, there definitely IS one section of the later Enchantments hike that is more than twice as steep as Section Line (~2000' in .5 miles). Ah well, guess I have almost 6 months to work up to that.
Need to figure out this blistering issue with my mountaineering boots still. Hopefully its just due to not being well broken in. In the meantime, there's always moleskin.
Hit the trail around noon after a miserable drive there. I forgot to take my cell out of the car, so I have no idea how long it took me to get to any of the waypoints. Due to weight reasons and crappy weather I left the camera at home, so no pictures. (Tiger isn't a very photogenic trail anyways, and the summits don't have a view when its overcast)
Started off on the Nook trail to get used to the weight. (0.9 miles, 560' elevation gained). I could tell already I'm not in as good of shape as I hope, but still way better than I feared. I also didn't consider that these boots were pretty much straight out of the box, so I started getting hotspots almost immediatly when I started heading up the hill. A rather wet log made a great place to throw some moleskin on, then keep plugging along.
At the top of Nook trail, there's a more or less flat 0.3 mile run on the Talus Rock Trail, before Section Line veers off to the left. I wanted conditioning, and I got it. The trail is STEEP, I mean Mailbox Peak steep. It basically goes straight up the side of West Tiger (switchbacks? Who needs switchbacks). Length: 0.9 miles, 1402' elevation gained) I hit the halfway intersection with The West Tiger Railroad Grade at about 1pm, which seemed pretty reasonable. (A nice lady with a fancy altimeter watch traded me the time for use of my topo map to recalibrate her altimeter) The rain turned to snow around 1600', and I started to see accumulation on the ground around 1700' or so. By the time I got the summit, the trail was hardpacked snow about 4-5" deep. The snow was getting worse, and I hadn't ever hiked the trail before, so I decided not to move on to the #2 and #1 summits. Maybe if I weren't solo and had some familiarity, but I'd already done the hard part anyways.
I planned to switch to the main West Tiger 3 trail for the way down, but ended up heading out via the Cable Line trail instead (and this is why I didn't want to go further to #2). Cable Line crosses the West Tiger trail not far down, so I realized my mistake and switched back to the main trail. Its a bit longer, but much less steep, which was nice, I didn't want to try to go back down Section Line without any sort of traction device, which I'd left at home. A quick 2.5 miles and I was back at the parkig lot.
Total time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Total mileage RT: 4.6 miles
Total elevation gained: 2000'
Reality check:
I definitely need more of these. Heading out to the Yakima area next Saturday with The Mountaineers for some off trail hiking that's estimated to be about 7 miles and 2000', so that'll be a nice followup
Trekking poles are great, especially when you run into unexpected snow.
No one section of Wonderland is near as difficult as Section Line. That makes me pretty optimistic about my ability to finish that 95 mile monstrosity.
Unfortunatly, there definitely IS one section of the later Enchantments hike that is more than twice as steep as Section Line (~2000' in .5 miles). Ah well, guess I have almost 6 months to work up to that.
Need to figure out this blistering issue with my mountaineering boots still. Hopefully its just due to not being well broken in. In the meantime, there's always moleskin.