On Sunday morning I saw the weather forecast calling for partly to mostly sunny weather with no chance of rain and decided to hike to South Tiger Mountain summit. After a late breakfast, my wife and I left home around 10:30 am. We drove by Chirico Trailhead and saw that the parking lot was full and even the private paid parking lot was almost full. We arrived at the South Tiger trailhead just before 11 am. There were many cars parked at the trailhead parking lot, which is a wide shoulder of Tiger Mountain Road SE. We found a spot and parked our car.
There was a sign board at the trailhead to warn about temporary trail closures due to timber harvesting between February 2023 and fall 2024. The accompanying map showed the timber harvesting area around Middle Tiger Mountain. This would not affect our plan to climb up to the South Tiger Summit.
The trail in the lower section had many muddy areas. This has been a chronic issue because of the poor drainage. We saw the flowers of salmonberry, osoberry, and yellow violet in this section. At the junction to the horse bypass trail, we took the hiker only trail and saw several trillium flowers. This was our first sighting of trillium flowers of the year.
At Holder Gap we took South Tiger Traverse Trail, which is actually a service road. We walked under power lines and took the trail into a forest. There was a tree down in this section but it was easy to step over it. After going through the forest, we crossed a service road and came to a junction to South Tiger Summit Trail. We took the South Tiger Summit Trail to the south summit and the north summit. Unfortunately Mount Rainier was not visible.
We returned the same way we came and arrived at the trailhead around 3:30 pm.
Stats:
Distance: 6.25 miles
Elevation Gain: 1,590 ft
Highest Point: 2040 ft (South Tiger Mountain, North Summit)
Total Time: 4h 28m
Moving Time:3h 43m
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