First, I went to seek out another giant wooden Troll.
This one is in Issaquah, right just below Tiger.
His name is Jakob. A happy fella with a necklace of houses.
He hangs on two trees, along Rainier Trail, with many people today.
East of the trail is the fence of Issaquah High School.
At the junction of the trail and 2nd ave, there's a very small trailhead parking lot.
Followed this trail south of the high school. at the next junction, I ran into a large group of high school kids in their physical education T-shirts (with their names on). Below the powerline, they stopped to regroup. I continued onto Section Line trail, or rather I thought I did.
Only found out that I was on Poo Poo Point trail, because it was not gaining elevation fast.
Corrected myself maybe 10-15 min in, and walked back down and onto Section Line.
It's more colorful than last month. The ground is covered with fallen leaves.
Lower trails are a bit wet and muddy.
Coming down, I slipped once higher up.
The problem of going on a hike on a work day, is that my phone was notifying me whenever someone at work needs my attention. I had to stop (twice) to log into a lab machine and diagnose some problem. Signal in the trees is bad. Up at the Tiger 3 summit, it's better. Still not the best (probably my carrier is lousy here).
Other hikers come and go, and I was sitting there working on my computer, tethered to my phone's network.
For almost half an hour! I got cold, copied the logs, and shut the laptop.
Didn't have time to go to Tiger 2, so didn't see Rainier.
I headed down ~4pm, it soon got quite dark. Sunset is 4:40pm now. Had to turn on headlamp for the last miles or so in the trees. Too many different trails. I took my usual trail down to East Sunset Way TH. Heavy traffic cars on Sunset Way, that I was walking faster than the cars. They all want to turn south on 2nd ave. At the bus stop ~5:30. Already ~5 people there waiting. Got on the bus ~5:40. More traffic around in and out of Mercer Island. Not sure why. I was a few minutes late for the 6:30 talk at Town Hall. Have to work after the talk.
