Thursday Hike Up Mailbox Peak

Finally, summer appears to have arrived in the greater Seattle area! On faith, I submitted to take one of my three personal holidays on Thursday in hopes to uncork a challenging hike with a great payoff at the end. This This hike with a final elevation around 4,900 feet, the real challenge is the 4,000 feet elevation gain within 3 miles!





My pictures start about 95% into the trail, where a rocky crown open up to a meadow of wildflowers, Normally, I'm not that much into flowers but it they were beautiful after nearly three miles of climbing (what is basically a tree root staircase). The good news about that climb is that you do have a nice tree canopy the entire way!



Inside the mailbox is a variety of stuff but I immediately grabbed the Sharpie and added my initials to the front of the mailbox.





Again, no real picture opportunities on the way down. Since it took 4 hours for us to make it to the peak, I assumed it would be much faster coming down. Not so much, as it turns out. The trail isn't so much switchbacks as it is a vertical staircase and it would be easy to misstep being (more than a little) tired and try to go to fast. This also was one of the few times that Bogie simply laid down a couple times to catch his breath and cool off. We brought plenty of water, so that wasn't it.






So about three times on the way down, I'd find a particularly muddy spot, let bogie cool off while I played Monopoly on my iPhone. I'd make a few rotations around Go, make some business trades, erect some houses on key properties and then continue on. There is one active stream at the trailhead and we stopped there for quite some time to let bogie cool off.


Oh, for those that might be interested, yes I did win the Monopoly game as well!