My wife and I hiked with our 20 month old daughter. The trail is nicely maintained and my daughter was able to navigate it without any mishaps. The self-guided story boards on this trail provided my daughter the opportunity to make animal noises as she saw their cartoons on the story boards. After the swamp trail ended we placed out LO in her backpack and moved on to the adventure trail. Both Swamp/Adventure were empty despite the parking lot and even 79th St. being packed with cars. All the these trails are in great shape and nice for any level or aged hiker. Maps of the area are placed throughout.

I haven't been on Tiger since high school. There's a whole lotta trails to choose from, and we don't actually know if or how this trail is connected to the one we were shooting for, hidden forest trail. But it was beautiful and relatively quiet. I wish we'd had a better map, so we could confidently make a great route for ourselves, rather than following directions that we realized well up the trail might not be specific enough for us to confidently know where we were going. Passed lots of runners. Overall a wonderful stretch of the legs. Now our mission is to really get to know the whole trail system, so we can just drive up from Tacoma and enjoy the mountain.

Weather wasn't as bad as predicted on 10/10/10. For some exercise, I did a quick jaunt around some of the lowland trails on Tiger Mountain. Nice forest and fall colors in the maples. The trails were in good shape. However, drainage dips need repair on the steep slope on the south end of the Adventure Trail. Drainage on the Poo Poo Point trail needs to be repaired, also. Old roads, such as the Poo Poo Point trail follows, often have severe drainage and erosion problems. Ideally, the DNR needs to use a trail building machine with a backhoe to dig out massive, long lasting drainage ditches on the Poo Poo Point trail.

I was in a mood for an easy walk, and the trail system around Tradition Lake filled the bill. Made about a 4 mile loop using the Bus Trail, Bonneville Trail, High School Trail, Adventure Trail, Big Tree Trail, and Swamp Trail. All paths were in good condition, with the notable exception of the Adventure Trail. Tiger Mountain's crack teams of trail maintainers have overlooked this one, it seems. There are two blowdown trees on the trail, one quite large. Also, the steeply graded section at the south end of the trail needs drainage work; drain dips are gone and the tread is eroded from storm runoff.

Tiger Mountain Lowlands Damage Finally got my power back so I can submit a report. I tried to cover several trails in the lowlands to check the damage from the big windstorm on 12/14/06. Note I am not even going to mention those trees that blew down across the trail that are laying on the ground and easy to step over. I'll just report the major stuff that slows down a hike/run. I started at Issaquah high school - the trail behind the high school where it crosses under the powerlines was not passable. BEWARE: There were powerlines laying in the trail. Further up the switchbacks towards the Tradition Plateau, the lines are hanging at head height across the trail. But for the rest of the HS trail, other than lots of limbs in the way, the trail is fine. The Adventure trail has about a half a dozen blow downs, including some multiples that are at about waist height. The biggest is on the switchback just north of the highest point on this trail. It fell lengthwise in the trail making it totally disappear, and the only real passable route is to climb over the tree and cut the switchback, assuming you know it's there. The Big Tree trail lost many big trees- major chainsaw action needed. Though a couple fell on the boardwalk, it seemed to escape any major damage. There are maybe 2 that pulled up a lot of ground in the trail when they came down, and the trail will likely need to reroute around the roots now. The Big Tree trail probably has the most damage of all I covered. The Swamp trail has only one major blowdown near the tradition trailhead. The Brink trail has several smaller (6-8"" diameter) trees that have blocked the trail at knee to waist hight, so expect to climb over or under a lot. One grouping had a lot of limbs, so took me awhile to get through. The wetlands trail seemed to escape any major blowdown sections. Likewise, the connector trail & lower Section Line is in great shape, though lots of limb debris. And the largest blockage is right by the gate at the bottom of the West Tiger #3 trail, and this will probably be gone by the time you read this report. It's going to take patience & a lot of work to clean up after this one.