- Hike
- Dawg Dash
But first, I met up with my friend Carrie for a hike. We mailed back and forth setting it up: I definitely wanted to hike, but I wasn't sure of any good routes, since it had been quite some time since I moved away. We settled on 6-8 miles with ~2000 foot elevation gain, which sounded reasonable. She brought more friends and we drove out to the Teanaway forest area to hike to Navajo Peak.
These three are serious hikers!
What we wound up doing was 13 miles and ~4500 foot elevation. Carrie is a strong hiker - I think she goes every weekend all year long, sometimes both days - and perhaps overestimated my hiking fitness in her ambition to summit, and probably didn't measure the route too carefully. ;) It was a tough hike, and I was dragging a bit by the end.
Navajo pass. The summit is another ~1200 feet up.
The view at the top of the pass was spectacular, and worth the hike. I was ready to turn around at this point, roughly 5.0 miles in with ~3200 feet of gain - that would have been enough for me. But Carrie wanted to summit Navajo peak, and it was "only" another 1.5 miles and ~1200 feet... so we headed up. It was snowing at the top, so the view wasn't too good. Despite how tough the hike was (for me at least), it did feel good to reach the summit.
Just below the summit, as fog and snow moved in.
I don't think I slowed them up too much, but I know I did. We got back to the trailhead as the sun was setting so it was good timing overall. Afterwards, e were famished and ate at a Mexican restaurant in Cle Elum.
The next day I ran the Dawg Dash in the rain. We were lucky: it rained lightly before the event, and poured afterwards, but during the event it didn't rain much at all.
The Dawg Dash is a fun event because it is dog friendly, and one of the UW homecoming events. After the race we retreated to Francesca's for Waffle Fest, a UW themed waffle brunch hosted by Francesca. Yum!
