The honeymoon is officially over. How long can you really wait before claiming that? At any rate, Hannah and I came back from hiking around Mt. Ranier last Wednesday and decided to go our separate ways for the weekend. Hannah went up the Anacortes to get Sydney and I attended Mischa’s Annual Guys Hike. I think this was the 12th Annual Event which started as a bachelor party when he got married. I can’t remember when I was first invited to attend (version 7 or 8 I believe), but they’re always memorable. Mostly because the group of guys are always great to be around and the hike never fails to be some sort of crazy scramble to the top of a mountain. Past hikes have involved walking across snowfields and climbing up tree roots in what seemed like a nearly vertical ascent.
This year’s version didn’t disappoint. Mischa decided Mt. Dickerson outside of Granite Falls would be our target (sorry I couldn’t find an actual map of the trail). It was a little over 4 miles each way and ended up being about 3000 ft in elevation gain (really tempting to make the uphill both ways joke here). Let’s just say going down was faster than going up, but the views from the top were amazing. To the north was Mt. Baker, west the Puget Sound, and south Mt. Ranier. We were able to camp in a meadow just below the summit, so we got a great view of both the sunset and sunrise. As an added bonus there were a couple black bears in the neighboring valley that we could see from the summit. They’re agile climbers indeed and I enjoyed watching them climb the cliffs in search of food and shelter for the night.
