Cougar Mountain

Wilderness Creek Trailhead

Last summer Susan and I took a day off a work each month to explore trails in the Columbia Gorge and around Mt Hood. Normally on the weekends we stick close to home in Forest Park, so we have more time with friends, family and to take care of other weekend obligations. By taking a day off to do a run in the middle of the week we don't have to worry about any of this, plus there is a lot less traffic on the trails and you feel like you have the whole place to yourself.

Ever since noticing the Cougar Mountain Trail Run Series last year in Seattle at The North Face store, I have been wanting to check out the trails on Cougar Mountain. Luckily my sister lives in Seattle and I visit quite a bit, but she is not a trail runner (yet) and I don't want to go visit and take off for a better part of a day to trail run and not spend time with her. I am not sure why it hasn't occurred to before that I should go up a day early, take the day off and go trail running while she is at work. Well luckily it did occur to me before last weekend, because that is exactly what I did.

I wanted to run at least 15 miles, since I hadn't run more than 13 miles by myself and mentally I needed to prove to myself I can do longer distances solo. I based my run on the 13 mile race route for the Cougar Mountain Trail Run Series, but I started out at the Wilderness Creek trailhead which added about a mile on to the run.  I figured I could add another mile on somewhere.

Bridge over Wilderness Creek

The trail climbed from the parking lot past a creek and through a heavily forested area to the highest point on Cougar Mountain. At this point I somehow took a wrong turn and headed down a very steep and unmaintained trail, I really tried to use my downhill running skills I learned in our running class that week, but it wasn't working. The trail eventually dead ended into a maintained trail, but there weren't any signs so I took an educated guess and turned right. I started to climb uphill again, which I was pretty sure I wasn't supposed to do, but I kept going. I also kept thinking to myself, "I better not be climbing up the same effing mountain again". I finally got to the top, and of course it was the highest point on Cougar Mountain, again. Well there is that extra mile plus I needed.  At that point I pulled out my map and was trying to figure out where I went wrong, when I guy I passed in the parking lot came hiking over and pointed me in the right direction.

"Sign in" book at the top of the hill. I should've signed it twice.

Luckily the rest of the run I stayed on course for the most part. The trails are very well marked, and each of them are pretty short, so you know pretty quickly if you are going the wrong direction. There weren't anymore big climbs after the first two, just a bunch of nice rolling hills. It was typical Seattle/NW weather when I ran, so I don't know if there are any views to speak of, but the trails are really nice and the forest is beautiful.

I am looking forward to taking more days off to explore the trails around Seattle, hopefully Susan will get to join me on a few of them.

Cougar Mountain trail map

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs...
This is actually pretty neat, King County Fitness Challenge

I forgot my vegan picnic, or this would've made the perfect place to take a break.

More bridges! 

Trail art or a trail cairn?

Well marked trails. 

Beware of shy bears. 

Up and down and up and down 20 miler

Wild Iris on Wildwood

Last week Susan and I started the 5 week "Mountain Goat Hill Running Series" taught by Yassine Diboun and Willie McBride of Animal Athletics. The first class focused on uphill running, which I was really looking forward to, not so sure about Susan. We talked about and practiced: 

• the pelvis bowl concept
• trying to keep your body as straight as possible 
• pumping your arms but not so much you are crossing your body 
• looking uphill but only about 3 feet or so ahead 
• my favorite, running a zig zag line instead of a straight line to help take some of the steepness out of a hill

New "NO BIKES" sign

So for our long run I wanted to make sure we got enough hills in, so we could practice our new skills. Susan accused me of trying to do extra credit work. 

John dropped us off at the Saltzman trailhead, we ran down to Wildwood and zigzagged between Leif and Wildwood a few times, until we ended up on Maple and back up to Wildwood. We then ran Wildwood all the way to Holman for the grand finale. After running 19+ miles we had to run up an unforgiving Holman to 53rd to finish. This is the first time I have ran up Holman without stopping to walk parts of it. The zig zag technique really helped, luckily Holman in wide enough to do this. I am not sure how well this would work on a narrow single track, I guess that is a question for this week's class. 

It's running skirt weather!

You are here: next to a giant spider

Ann in bright colors and cute outfit on Maple

route:

saltzman - ww : 1.12

ww - ridge (mm 16-20.8) : 4.8

ridge - leif : .34

leif - FL7A : .46

FL7A - ww : .25

ww - wiregate (mm 20-18.2) : 1.8

wiregate - leif : .31

leif - maple : .68

maple - ww : 3.55

ww - keil (mm 12.75-9.20) : 3.55

keil - wild cherry : .17

wild cherry - ww : .31

ww - holman (mm 7.89-5.90) : 1.99

holman - 53rd : .76

total 20.09

Eighteen and over

This was a nice trip out to the far end of Wildwood from Springville, my favorite trailhead, and then straight back. We built in a shorter option in case we could entice Sally to run with us again, but she injured her foot the day before and skipped out.

A missing shoe at the far end of Wildwood

• Start at Springville
• Springville to FL7 to Hardesty-- .08mi Hardesty to LE (9.00)-- .56mi (.64 total)
• Leif (9.00) to Cannon (le 11.17)-- 2.17mi (2.81 total)
• Cannon to WW (24.63)-- .32mi (3.13 total)
• WW (24.63) to Newberry Rd (ww 30.16)-- 5.53mi (10.2 total)
• Newberry (ww 30.16) to Ridge (ww 20.86)-- 9.3mi (17.96 total)
• Ridge to FL7-- .4mi (18.36 total)
• FL7 to car-- .32mi (18.68 total)

Same route 3 times

John dropped me off at Saltzman and I ran home

I mention to Susan recently that we should try running the same route a few weekends in a row and see if we can get faster. The idea of running the same route bores me, but the challenge of getting faster spikes my curiosity. I thought I would give it a try this weekend while Susan was at the coast and I had some flexibility by working from home on Friday and Monday.

just in case I forgot

The route is pretty simple, Saltzman - Wildwood - Birch - home, which is ~10 miles. Each day I ran about an hour after I woke up. Friday was the first day I ran, and around mile 13 a mountain biker almost ran me over on Wildwood, which completely startled me since bikers are not suppose to be on Wildwood. I would of thought the adrenaline rush would of made me faster, but Friday was my slowest day, 1:42:5.

On Saturday I was able to shave a little off the time, but not much, 1:41. I took Sunday off and went to yoga. On Monday I ran a little bit earlier, since I had a 9:30am conference call. It rained Sunday night, so the trails were muddier than my previous runs, but still was able to run 1:41:32.

I listened to podcast each time I ran, I wonder if having fast paced music would speed me up. Ideally I would like to shave 10 minutes off my time, but I would be happy with 1:39.

Coastal ten miler

View south from Cape Falcon

A few weeks ago (it's May 13 as I write this, but I've back-dated the post to reflect the date I ran) I was at the coast for the weekend, so I did the spectacular Cape Falcon trail and continued north until I hit the very top of the hill, then turned around for about 10 miles out and back.

An inaccessible black beach

While the trail to Cape Falcon is gorgeous, north past the cape the trail gets even better. There are fewer people and more stunning views of tiny, empty crescent beaches, distant headlands and dense, craggy forests.

More craggy coastline

The trail is soft and narrow, passing over creeks and climbing up and down some good hills. With a high point of about 1,000 ft, I say the elevation gain of this route is somewhere around 1,500 ft.

Striking red rock and black sea arches

At one point I caught sight of the most massive tree I have ever seen outside of the Redwoods in northern California. It was so shockingly huge that I crashed through undergrowth and fallen branches to get up close, so I could feel with my own arms just how big the trunk was.

North to Arch Cape

This photo doesn't do it justice, but it was at least 12 ft in diameter. I was in awe. Visiting such an ancient tree is reason enough to go run the coast.

The biggest non-giant redwood tree I have ever seen

See this great Oswald West park map for more details and trail inspiration.

Sally is crazy

Flowering currant

Sally joined us for a Sunday run. She had never run more than nine miles before... and stuck with us for a full 15! It was fun to take her out on a tour of our usual trails, seeing the beauty of springtime blossoming with fresh eyes. She also challenged our speed a few times. Great run!

Trillium past its prime

Birch - Wildwood:  .22

Wildwood (mile makers 7.5 - 12.75) - Maple: 5.25

Maple - Firelane 4: 1.79

Firelane 4 - Leif: .21

Leif to Koenig: .55

Koenig - Wildwood: .14

Wildwood (mile markers 14.20 - 7.50) - Birch: 6.7

Birch - 53rd: .22

Total : 15.08

A run on the dry side of the Cascade Mountains

We spent the weekend in Sun River, near Bend, and scoped out the top trail for our weekend run.

Deschutes River Trail system map-- looks so simple

After a little bit of online research and looking through the William Sullivan (best hiking book author for Oregon and the Pacific Northwest!) book for the region, we started at the Meadow Picnic area.

River at the trailhead

Ideally we would've run to Benham Falls for an 18-mile out-and-back, but time being tight as always, we planned to run an hour out and then turn around.

Sign at the trailhead

Despite the simple trail map, we got lost pretty quickly after the slough. We lost sight of the river, turned left at some shotgun shells in the sparse, dry pine woods, and when we crossed a road we realized we were lost.

Ann's getaway car

When we finally made our way back to the trail we recognized, we saw the wooden stake with a stick-figure hiker; those, and signs that simply said "trail" were our clues.

Peaceful slough

I can't say the trail was well marked, but there were signs, and once we got going along the river we were pretty well set.

Raging rapids

The trail was gorgeous single track, dry and red, with short, rambling ups and downs that really whipped our lungs what with being at around 4,500ft elevation.

Flumes and snow in the distance

The river changed from calm and glassy, high up to grassy banks, to raging rapids hedged in by rocky cliffs-- always beautiful to run alongside.

Steep log-ladder steps

It was so much fun to run in such a different environment, and we have big dreams of running the whole trail.

Neverending steps