Night Hike - Poo Poo Point

The trip began with meeting at the Tibbets Valley Parking lot, and we while we were all on time, an intense bout with traffic delayed our start time by close to half an hour. We parked on the street in front of the  Poo Poo Point trailhead parking lot, as King County technically closes the lot from dusk until dawn. Once we were all equipped with headlamps, flashlights, rain gear, and flashlights, we did our trailhead briefing, and adjusted our turnaround time to 7:45pm from 7:30pm to account for our delay.

Thus, we began the trek up to Poo Poo Point, with a light rain that soon turned into fluffy snow, and continued to change character throughout the course of the hike. As we made our way up, we began seeing more snow accumulation, peaking at the top of the southern lookout at around 1-2 inches.

While the hike had been advertised as a moonlit one, cloud cover prevented that all throughout the hike. That is, right up until the moment we reached the top where the moon peeked out for the few minutes that we took a break to eat some of Jen's delicious chocolate chip cookies. 

And notably, we made it right at our turnaround time of 7:45pm to the top!

After some treats and photos, and in better spirits, we began our descent, noting that the trail had become slightly more precarious with additional water, mud, and slippery rocks. Unfortunately, one of our members took a fall on the way down due to an inconveniently placed branch, but was quickly back up on their feet. While we had noted that the headlamps and flashlights were doing a better-than-expected, if not great, job of illuminating the trail, we noted that the angle of the headlamp was key to illuminate the trail immediately in front to prevent any other mishaps.

Without further incident, and accompanied by the loud cooing of multiple owls, we made it back down to the car, did our post trail briefing in said car, were met with no traffic back to the parking lot, and all departed for home.

While we all very much enjoyed this take on an otherwise insanely popular hike (it was serene, with only owls keeping us company), especially given the conditions of rain/snow/cold, we probably would not do anything much more difficult than this for a night trail hike. Good headlamps/flashlights, a policy of staying close together, and an easy pace all made for a very enjoyable night out to break up the week.

Lastly, this was Rob's (my) mentored hike, and it was a blast from end to end - thank you Peter for all the wonderful feedback throughout the process! Looking forward to more Urban Hikes with you!