Today’s hike was to Poo Poo Point. Anu and I thought this was going to be a 7.2 mile hike with an elevation gain of 1,748 feet, but it turned out this one was on the Chirico trail, which also leads to Poo Poo Point but is only a 3.8 mile roundtrip with an elevation gain of 1,760 feet. Still, that kind of distance and elevation gain is nothing to pooh pooh. Besides, we ended up walking a total of 6 miles by continuing past Poo Poo Point…not realizing that we had, in fact, already reached our intended turn-back point.

Paragliders use this area for their amusement. In fact, we saw a paraglider descending onto the open field at the start of our hike. At the very top, the ground falls off eerily; it is a launch point for paragliders.

I discovered the beautiful Red Baneberry (actaea rubra) along the trail. These are the purple-leafed plants in the picture below. I also discovered, to my amazement, that the Devil’s Club (oplopanax horridus) has red berries that look a lot like those of the Red-berried Elder (sambucus racemosa). Of course, the giant leaves give it away.

As we started walking into the forest, it occurred to me that it’s incredibly difficult to capture the essence of such an experience with a photograph. The precise amount of light, shade and contrast, the feeling of spaces wide open, the smells and sights of the vegetation — these are well-nigh impossible to replicate visually in any meaningful sense. As a bonus, we found a Pacific Banana Slug (ariolimax columbianus) that cheerfully posed for a portrait.

Today, we drove a little further out, to Longmire near Mount Rainier, to hike the Rampart Ridge Loop trail. This is another easy trail with a total length of 5.28 miles and elevation gain of 1,456 feet (if you return via the Wonderland trail as we did, instead of doubling back). The peace and quiet during the hike was absolutely worth the 2-hour drive it took us to get there. In fact, we encountered no one else during this hike except for a couple of people at the very end. I rather enjoyed this communion with nature, punctuated with conversations on random topics like speculative science.

Although, we were promised excellent views of Mount Rainier, we came across none, or perhaps we missed it behind the clouds. It’s ironic that Mount Rainier is ever present and easy to spot from Seattle and Bellevue, but much harder to find when we’re right at its foot.

The trail had a number of quaint little bridges over small streams, one of which seemed extremely rickety. The national park has some spectacular trees, and this trail is no exception.

I found some specimens of ‘Common Beargrass’ (xerophyllum tenax), ‘Devil’s Club’ (oplopanax horridus), and ‘Cascade Oregon-grape’ (berberis nervosa) along the way.

On the way back, we stopped at Narada Falls. This waterfall flows into the Paradise river, which runs parallel to the Nisqually river and eventually joins it.

The glorious Narada Falls, on the way to Paradise.

We got some coffee and soda at the Elbe Market Country Store. There are several statues of Bigfoot in front of and around the store. The light blue waters of Alder Lake by the road here was quite a sight to behold.

Lake 22 is another short and easy hike, an hour and twenty minutes away from Bellevue. It is a roundtrip of 5.4 miles with an elevation gain of 1,350 feet. The toughest thing about this hike was finding parking — it turned out to be surprisingly busy at 8:30am, and we ended up parking half a mile away from the trailhead. In fact, it was so busy initially that we had a large group of people blocking our path ahead on the trail and I started regretting my choice of hike. But fortunately, we managed to break through the crowd and sprint ahead.

People who are inconsiderate enough to park their cars with unnecessary gaps, thus depriving others of precious parking spots — some say these are the folks who end up in “Parking Hell” when they die…where they’re forced to drive around mindlessly looking for parking spots, and everytime they find one, someone else swoops in and takes it from them. (Some others disagree, they say they just get sent to Capitol Hill in Seattle to find parking.)

This might be a bit of a quirk, but when it’s just us, Anu and I prefer to get to the turnaround point of the hike as quickly as possible. We might take a break every couple of miles to have a few sips of water, but we seldom pause to take in the sights or take photos. No, all that must wait until the return journey.

Lake 22 offers a pleasant view with calm waters. There’s actually some snow and ice on the mountain across the lake, which reflects on the surface of the water. There are some gorgeous views of the landscape along the trail. You also pass by several gushing waterfalls. Quite a few old tree trunks lie along the route.

I quite enjoyed seeing the diverse flora along the trail. The most interesting of the lot is a orange-and-yellow wildflower called ‘Western columbine’ (aquilegia formosa). That’s the one on the right, below. I also noticed some wonderfully polished rocks that absolutely deserved to be photographed.

Overall, our parking situation added an extra mile for us to walk, but I’m not sure if that ought to count as part of the hike.

Today’s hike was a relatively easy one, 5.6 miles roundtrip with 1,585 feet elevation gain, with the trailhead along the I-90 corridor. This is, of course, the Teneriffe Falls Trail — not to be confused with the Mount Teneriffe Trail, which begins at the same trailhead but continues for 13 miles all the way up to the summit.

The waterfall at the top was a relatively calm one. In fact, it was only on the way back that we discovered it had even been in plain view about half a mile before getting the top, and both Anu and I had completely missed it on the way up. Perhaps we had been too engrossed in our conversation then.

We picked and ate some salmonberries (rubus spectabilis) on the way down. The yellow ones taste a tad like tomato. We did not eat any of the red-berried elder (samucus racemosa) — they are poisonous if eaten raw! We found a good deal of purple foxglove (digitalis purpurea) that added to the natural beauty of the woods.