Die another day!

A broken tree blocks the path on Tiger 3 Tuesday, Oct. 17, blown down by strong wind.

The sky began disgruntled, and then it got really mad at me before I had hiked a half mile up the Tiger 3 trail today. The weather report was rain and winds. Not much rain, but "winds" was an understatement. I had probably walked less than a quarter mile when I heard loud, ominous cracking sounds in the swaying trees by the trail. I glanced  around, and decided to always position myself by a solid-looking tree when I heard a crack.

Before long, I came across the scene in the photo above -- a broken tree section and branches almost blocking the trail. I looked at the swaying trees overhead, considered the conditions, and stepped around the broken log, proceeding upward cautiously. That's when I came across the fallen tree in the photo below:

This was a fresh fall, right beside the trail, which must have occurred within the past day.

Like the log I had just passed, this fall is fresh. Really fresh. The wind was gusting more powerfully, and trees were swaying. How many of them were weakened and ready to topple? I walked ahead a bit, and the higher I got on the trail, the angrier the wind became. Was this getting personal?

I turned back and was halfway down to the trailhead when something snapped above me. I accelerated forward, but not forward enough to get past the falling branch, below, which landed in front of me at my feet. It could have been any branch, and a lot bigger.

It wasn't a big branch -- but it might have been. Time to call it a day.

The illustration below shows the route I hiked. When compared to a topo map it appears I reached 880 feet of elevation, and barely a half mile from the trailhead.

The hiking lines pinpoint the location of the trailhead and the point at which I turned back.

I headed back to the condo with a plan of complementing this effort with a hike to Ivar's Acres of Clams on the waterfront. That hike represented a 350-foot ascent from Alaskan Way.

Today's statistics

Distance: 3.8 miles, 6 km (Tiger and city hikes)
Load: Too short a hike to count
Elevation gain: At least 600 feet

Stats for year to date:
Distance: 337.8 km
Elevation Gain: 28,730 feet

I am 92 feet away from my second Rainier for the year.