Ecuador!

Can't believe that I am visiting Ecuador trip advisor forum, less than a year after I was exploring Kenya and Tanzania. This seems to be turning into year of foreign travel. If I can make New Zealand happen at end of the year, I would have visited all 6 continents in same year! (yes, Antarctica does not count!) Just booked my tickets, but there are still so many unknowns in the trip. Though if I did end up going and doing something even of not much hiking, it will not be a waste of $1000.

4th-of-july-creek

Today was a beautiful sunny day in Leavenworth. I headed for 4th-of-july-creek with meetup group. Its a not so easy hike, so I decided to not take heavy pack. I needed to keep pace with rest of the group. This hike starts out steep, gaining lot of elevation in first 3.5 miles. After that you enter the ghost forest and its quite flat from here. After a mile or so of ghost forest, you climb up to Icicle Ridge with lots of switchbacks. There is some snow towards the very end, but its melting fast and was not a problem at all. I did not need to use my stabilizers also.

I do not know why, but I was quite exhausted in the beginning. I just could not make my legs move any fast on the steep uphills. Had to dump some of the water in the middle to keep up with the group.

The views were just amazing. Clear blue skies. First we saw the Cashmere range, then Enchantments. The hill sides were full of wild-flowers rigth from start. At places we were literally switch-backing through fields of flowers, mostly purple lupines. We also spotted a few tiger littles and bunch of unknown purple, while and yellow flowers. There were also some pink wild roses. After 4 miles, you enter the ghost forst, its a bunch of tress burnt down in a forest fire a while ago, it looks creept and ghostly. When you reach the Icicle Ridge, there were views of North Cascades behind, enchantments and cashmere ranges in front.

Elevation gain - 4800ft
Distance - 11.5 miles
Time - 4:00 hrs up, 3hrs down
Pack weight - 20 lbs

http://picasaweb.google.com/tulika.agrawal/4thOfJulyCreek#

Rock'n'Roll Volunteer

A day of volunteering at Rock'n'Roll marathon expo! This is second year of Rock'n'Roll marathon in Seattle and they had 28000 runners. I chose not to run this year as I wanted to concentrate on hiking, plus I am not keen on running same course again. So I decided to volunteer this year. The Expo was less grand than last year's. There were more and more things for sale, than for give away. There was also an increasing number of energy bars and gels, things I have never heard of or seen at REI. They all tasted almost the same, the world as just become even more confusing!

Seeing the runners from other side of desk was interesting. Some were seasoned runners, just give me my packet and I will get out of here. Some were OMG, my first marathon, I have no idea what's happening. There were couple of people who (or their significant others) wanted to record every moment, even packet pickup. I think it was rude to take my picture handing the packet without asking me - bcoz I would have said no! Overall it was quite fun!

Mt Si - 32lb

Today was quite a sunny day and I decided its better to not waste it sitting in office. So I put the idea on meetup group to start the hike @2 and 3 other people joined. I am loving meetup! We started the hike @2:10. This must have been my first sunny Mt Si hike this year and I was glad for all the shade along the trail. View of Rainier and surrounding mountains was gorgeous! Temp up at peak was nice and warm and it was hard to leave and come down.

Pack weight - 32lb

Time up - 2hr 15min

Time down - 1hr 15min.

Tiger West #3

This weekend was totally miserable. Wanted to go to Bandera yesterday with meetup group, but just could not get out of rajai, tired and gloomy weather. Then got paged just when thinking of leaving, so good excuse to not go. Spent rest of the day sleeping. Today packed the backpack and lunch to do a Mt Si and then Tiger hike. It was raining on the way, lost interest and ended up just doing Tiger West. The trail is not as easy as I thought, or I was just struggling because of yesterday's comatose state. Hopefully sun will come out and will have better rest of the week.

Elevation gain - 2000ft
Distance - 6 miles
Time - 2:30 hrs
Pack weight - 30 lbs

Cable line

A quick hike up cable line today. Decided not to carry pack, the weekend and rest of week had been very tiring. Did not seem to have made any difference to timing!
Pack wt - 20lb

Lake 22

This was a easy hike, wanted to chillout before the weekly madness starts. Did not even carry a pack. The views were just great.

Data:
Elevation gain - 1200ft
Distance - 5.4 miles
Time - 4:00 hrs
Pack weight - 15 lbs

http://picasaweb.google.com/tulika.agrawal/Lake22#

Mt Washington - 3

ya, fine, call me crazy, stupid, why, what or whatever. I decided to go back to Mt Washington again this weekend. Last weekend was cloudy and I did not take heavy enough pack. This time I took 32 - 35lb pack. The view was as awesome as I had remembered on this clear day. This time went up the shorter 4 mile trail and came down the great wall trail.

Data:
Elevation gain - ~3400ft
Distance - ~10 miles
Time - 6:00 hrs
Pack weight - 32 - 35lb

http://picasaweb.google.com/tulika.agrawal/MtWashington#

Mt Washington - 2

Second trip to Mt Washington. The first one was a snowshoe, so this was different. I was carrying only about 25lb this time. We took the great wall trail up and regular trail down.

Data:
Elevation gain - ~3400ft
Distance - ~10 miles
Time - 6:30 hrs (a 40 min detour also)
Pack weight - 25lbs

At the first junction, we were suppose to make right, but we thought that we needed to go straight to go on the great wall trail. This trail led us to some sketchy trails which were clearly meant for climbers and not hikers. So we came back to the juction and followed the one on right. Soon we were at owl lookout point. Little bit ahead of that is second junction, the real one for Great Wall trail. So we took that one to summit. Its long and mostly flat. But there is a nice ridge walk with much better views that the shorter trail. Way back the shorter new trail. It was partly cloudy, some view of Rainier and surrounding, nothing as dramatic as what we saw last time.

Tiger Mtn Cable line

Yesterday we did the "short" after work hike to Tiger Mtn. Cable line to go up - 1 hr 13 min. I had a pack of about 20lbs. The trail is relentless climb of ~2000ft in 1.5 mile. I am beginning to find flat section on the trail now :). Back using the regular 3 mile trail - 50min.

Mt Si with 35lbs

or probably 40lbs. This was a long weekend, but weather had squashed all the plans. So I headed back to Mt Si. This time I opted to be brave and stuffed almost 35 lbs in my pack. I don't think I have ever carried more than 30lbs in any of my backpacking trips. And it totally showed. Even at the first mile, I was already tired and celebrating the quarter of way done. By mile 2, I was starting to doubt if I will make it, and I was playing with the idea of emptying half of the 5 gallon water. Then I told myself, the only difficult stretch is mile 2 - 2.5, rest is easy. So I went upto 2.5. I was doing 18 min per half-mile. After 2.5, there was no way I was going to give up. It actually became better after 3 mile, though the last section was getting really hard. I reached the peak in little under 2 & 1/2 hrs, what a disaster! I gave up at bottom of the rocky section, sat there and had my snack bar. It was strange that I did not see too many hikers with pack this time.
To make up for the shameful extra 20 min I took, I decided to hike down with same full pack. I really had to pace myself so as not to hurt my knees. Just one stop at the flat mid-way point and was down in well under 2hrs.

Mt Si with 30 lbs

When it is rainy and cloudy and alone, I hike Mt Si for timepass :) This time I carried a 30lb pack. There were about 200 people at the trailhead and a group of high school boy scout something. I usually don't mind crowded trails, and definitely not when I am hiking alone. Though this time it was a nuisance. I started just about the time the scout group started. First they wanted to run, and overtake me, then like usually teenagers, lost all energy and I had to pass them all one by one. It was rainy, and still there were all lot of annoying young people on the trail, who have no idea that they are suppose to give way to folks going up.
After 3 mile, I started seeing snow. It was actually snowing there. A couple of slushy patches slowed my down a little. I made it safely to the top, and it was great, I was not tired at all, the pack seemed fine and I made it in 2hr 10min. It was a proper snowfall at the top, nothing to see. The rocks were covered in snow, so I decided to not scramble with my pack. My hands were getting numb and I could not find the stupid gloves. Somehow found the cap when I was almost about the cry and warmed my hands one at a time, while almost running down to get to lower elevation.

Camp Muir

On this perfect and sunny day, we headed for Camp Muir. Some of us started at 4:00 in the morning to make it a day hike. I was somewhat apprehensive if I would be at my best given before 4:00 wake up and 2 & 1/2 hr drive. But I was fine, driving was ok and I was in good spirits when we started. I took the bold decision to not carry my snowshoes, and see how that goes. Since we had a early morning start, 7:00am snow was still packed ice. The first section was easy, I soon got comfortable walking on the snow and there were quite a few boot tracks to follow. Then came a very steep section. Luckily folks before us had already dug steps and I could follow it like stairs. I got a little stuck at the second tiny steep section, but managed to scale it. Rest of the way was not that hard. Soon we saw the Muir hut and that made it easier.

At the top, it was cold and windy. Temp was def below 0. It was hard to find a spot away from wind, but we found a rock and settled there to make hot chocolate. Spent close to 30 min at Muir before starting down. The plan was to glissade as much as we can, ahem! I started first couple of glissades apprehensively. It was ok on less steep slopes, but definitely glissading down steep slopes is not my thing. Snow was much softer now and we were postholing like anything. Somehow managed to slide, glissade, walk down to Paradise. Total time close to 8hrs.

Whidbey half-marathon 2010

Another half-marathon down, this time 2:28:49, could have easily shaved off 5 more min from it, but the course was just way too beautiful to run though. I had to stop every few miles to take in the view and enjoy it. This was the first marathon, I really totally enjoyed. The course is all full of rolling hills. The hills did not bother me at all since I trained for the worst in Kirkland. I stopped took photos, maintained a steady pace, never really strained, it was a easy glide through!

10.8 miles in Kirkland

Running in Kirkland is pure torture and only for the insane! But then so is Whidbey and I signed up for that insanity months ago. So here is a 10 miler in Kirkland which will train you for Whidbey.
URL for this route is: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3565044

But after the short hike yesterday (I don't want to talk about it!), I thought I would give myself a treat and go for a quick 10 mile on Sammamish River flats. Managed 7 bcoz was not prepared for the rain, but it was good in the end.

URL for this route is: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3500116

--
tuls

8 miles

My first 8 mile long run after the full marathon. Now that I live in Kirkland, I ran this in Kirkland and running in Kirkland is always a mistake. The killing hills were just too much for the first run.

Walking on streets

walked from dinner place to apartment, 10:00pm at night, -4C temp.
URL for this route is: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3439478

I think hiking 2009 is over

and I have no complains, and its sort of high time! This has been a amazing season. I checked off more things from my list than I could put up there. We did the big Enchantments which was definitely the best backpacking. I finally finished St Helens too. Also checked off Half-Dome which was a nice surprise. There were some surprisingly nice hikes like Navaho Peak and berries at Shriner Peak. We managed to go everywhere this season starting from Columbia River Gorge, St Helens, Mt Rainier, Olympic, Baker, Wenatchee. Now its time to give legs some rest and concentrate on dancing before running begins. (ok, none of these is actually giving any rest to the legs!). Things left on list for next seaon will be - Lake Chelan, Glacier once more, Ingalls, a pretty short list :)

Weekly running route

So I am hoping to do a 7.5 - 8 mile run on weekly basis till I start training for next marathon. Here is the weekly route -URL for this route is: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3217262 through beautiful Kirkland waterfront.