Granite Peak, Snoqualmie, Wa we left from mercer island around 8:30am, after eating breakfast, gassing up and buying some bottled water. arrive at a ranger station in Snowqualmie around 9:20am and are on the trail hiking around 9:40am. the forest was dark and wet. the trail was very easy to walk on. the grade was moderate with plenty of switchbacks. there were lots of huge pine trees and some dead ones still stood quite tall. after an hour or so we started crossing some cleared out gaps in forest. slides. we crossed three or four slides. we emerged onto open meadow. a few pines stuck out of the hillside. the meadow was widespread and provided copious huckleberries. after a mile or so we started tasting a different berry, maybe bear berry. i picked constantly while attempting to keep up my pace. there was a deer i guess. we reached a bowl area, took photos, wandered off the trail briefly. we hiked on the trail along a ridge above the bowl. the trail winds up a valley into a wider bowl and where the watchtower is visible. the trail winds some more between a few large mossy pine trees. short switch backs take you up to the summit. clouds obscured the southern view. where we ate lunch just off the summit to the north the clouds broke enough to see a few peaks within granite peaks range. a chipmunk scurried around where we ate. i ate four cookies or something, a sandwich and an orange or something. we hiked back and the horizon laid out before us. the clouds vanished. we finished hiking at 4:20pm.

west mountain

on saturday around 2pm bryan, ben and myself left my parent's house and drove to the parking area on 9w just passed the bear mountain park access. signs at the trail head to doodletown said it was closed. we stood on the road where it crossed a swelling hudson tributary. a snake swam up stream out from under the bridge. after consulting the map we drove back up to the palisades circle and out towards seven lakes drive which turned out to be closed due to flood damage. we continued down the parkway to the anthony wayne recreational area. about five or six cars were parked at the edge of a gigantic parking lot. we parked and walked into the woods at a trail head next to the unmanned booth on the park entrance road. a turkey vulture flew into a tree next to the trail. ben walked ahead and bryan and i stayed behind to shoot it with our cameras. bryan put his camera away and took a twisted tea bottle out of my pack. bryan drank the tea and hiked. we took a right at the first fork onto the beechy bottom bike trail. a snake or rodent moved around in the grass next to us. we heard it move up into the bushes. i told them we were walking the wrong direction. we turned around walked in the other direction. back at the junction we took a red trail up an immediately steep grand and then a quick flat ground. from there it was gradual and rocky hike a long a ridge. we stopped and had more teas on a rock from which you could see the ridges to the west and bear mountain to the north. we hiked the rest of the way to the west mountain summit and ben and i opened the last two twisted teas and drank them. we saw one guy at the shelter. he said the shelter was a shit hole. the whole trip took about 5 hours, including driving. we maybe hiked 3 miles.