I met my hiking buddy Jeno at 6:00 AM this morning at the May Valley trailhead to do one of our favorite loop hikes around the south and east sides of Squak Mt. Our route was:
Start out on the May Valley loop and then a short jaunt on the South Access road, back onto May Valley to Phil's Creek. Phil's to Old Griz, then up Old Griz to Central Peak topping out at the radio towers. To save time we then took the access road back down to the parking lot.
It was a chilly 35 degrees when we headed out. There are a number of trees down on the May Valley trail. A couple you can step over and there is one large one that even I had to climb over. All the streams, creeks and tributaries are running strong and fast today and in spots have overflowed onto the trail so make sure you have waterproof boots, shoes, trail runners, etc. as the May Valley trail has a lot of water on it.
We were approaching the junction with the Sycamore trail on the east side of Squak when I saw headlamp coming up that trail fast. I never saw the person just a silhouette as they turned onto the trail ahead of us. I told Jeno I don't know if it was a man, woman or Bigfoot messing around with his flashlight. We never saw them or the light again. Poof they were gone. By the time we turned onto Old Griz it was light enough to see without our headlamps so we turned them off on the last section up to Central Peak and the towers. The sunrise was really pretty this morning and I tried to capture a picture of it with the radio towers since there are no views up there. There was also a nice temperature inversion at the top so we could ditch some of our layers.
We have both seen the trip reports about the box or locker near the towers that everyone is taking photos of including me. Turns out it's an old microwave plastered with stickers and full of various items. We checked it out and then started the road trek back to the cars. We saw one hiker heading up the road and were probably 2/3rds of the way down when in quick succession we saw two King County trucks and one contractor's truck heading up the road towards the towers.
We got back to the parking lot at 8:40. There were only 5 cars there besides ours and one of those left before we did so a quiet morning on the trail for us.
Stay safe everyone. See you on the trail. SR
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