Klondike Swamp — Friday, Feb. 13, 1998

Issaquah Alps > Cougar Mountain

For our Valentine's day Trail College at Cougar Mountain a WTA trail team spent the day taking the swamp out of the Klondike Swamp trail. This trail is open to horses and at one particularly bad spot the horses hooves were getting mired in a mud hole that stretched for 50 feet down the trail. Attempts to build a turnpike in the past had failed, so we removed more mud, improved a drainage ditch and then laid down at least 25 wheelbarrel-fulls of gravel. Shortly after we dumped our last load of gravel on the trail two horses showed up to try it out. No problem. Shortly there after pandemonium broke loose as the trail team's maturity level dropped. As I recall it started with Anna giving me one of her ""mud-hugs"". This was followed with a more overt application of mud to my body. Reciprocation on my part lead to the formation of two rival factions heavily armed with large quantities of mud. By the time we reached the trail head each of us was covered with a few pounds of mud except Bruce who wisely took another route back. And I would like to state, unequivocally, one last time, for the record that I did not ""improperly apply mud"" to the windshield of Greg's truck.