McClellan Butte

I just finished Into the Wild yesterday and I highly recommend it for those that have contemplated selling all their possessions and roaming the earth. I’m going through my adventure books kick at the moment so this was a good read after finishing Into Thin Air a short while back. Krakauer is just an amazing writer, he does his research and gives various background stories that are as fun to read as the main story arc. In Into the Wild, he talks about a kid who decided to go on an extended solo journey but was eventually found dead. He compared various solo adventurers and talked about their love for solitude yet they still yearn for human companionship in between adventuring. The thing that gets me is that through his writing you do feel sad for the boy that died, but the true heartbreak comes in for the people that loved him...that waited years to hear from him. I sometimes worry that I'm falling too hard into the selfish solo adventurist category…I feel like I lose sight of the fact that having people that love me is a true blessing and as such I should not be so careless with my own life.

I said I was probably going to miss out on hiking this weekend because I was helping out with PAX…but of course I’m a bad liar. Or maybe not…because I just kept getting lost. So if strolling into the woods blindly and turning whenever I hit a tree is considered hiking that’s just about what I did. I don’t know how the hell I keep getting lost these days.

I’ve decided to hike McClellan Butte because it’s supposed to be a decently burly hike (8.8 miles 3800ft gain) that is pretty close to Seattle, so that I could make it back to help at PAX. Just look out for signs pointing to the trail and not wandering into whatever trail you might see along the way like me, and you’ll be fine. I wandered into Alice Creek with this creepy dark tunnel and freaked the hell out of myself.

I couldn’t find a trail from there so gave up and turned around, right at that little trail junction, I saw a lady walking her dog and asked if she knew the way and she pointed up a little further at another trail…with the big fucking sign that said “Mc Clellan Butte Trail”. I smart!

Then right at the point where I saw the peak, I lost the trail again and wandered onto the scrambling point trail. Freakiest thing EVER! I climbed halfway up before I realized this could not possibly be the trail because it was just too dangerous for a hiker. That scramble felt like it required some heavy duty climbing gear. So I slowly made my way back…then found the real trail. Yay, me! Way to get lost constantly.

Overall the hike was pretty easy, the trail is being worked on so most of it is nicely maintained. The hike felt like a slightly more difficult version of Mount Si in that the trail is kind of uneventful and the view is about the same up top…but it does get a lot less traffic which is nice.

Short slide of hike here.