I was 26 when I first climbed Mount Si. A younger fellow student suggested that we climb it. Although I'd lived in Seattle for three years, I'd never even heard of Mt. Si -- one of the most popular day hikes in the state. At 26, I wasn't quite yet a hiker, wasn't quite yet a wilderness devotee. But a hike sounded like fun, so I said, sure!
I've climbed Mount Si so many times now, and done it with so many different friends, that it seems odd to recall how appalled I was once the hike was under way. I whined all the way to the top. I was so tired, I didn't even try to resist, once we reached the "top," when my friend insisted that we do the class three scramble of the "haystack" that juts from the top. We made it up the haystack, and while I sat panting on a rock, my friend unfurled a kite he'd carried all the way up, and flew it from the summit.
The kite was surreal, but no more so to me than everything else that day.
I described Mt. Si, and a typical climb, in a post on this blog exactly ten years ago Saturday. See "Mt. Si." And since that post, every time I've climbed Mt. Si, I've gone back to that 2011 post and added my latest time at the end. I completed the climb memorialized in the post in one hour and forty minutes. My times since have been fairly consistent, but with a gradual overall increase from year to year in the time I needed to struggle to the top.
Yes, sometimes I was in better shape than other times, and that is reflected in blips in the otherwise increasing times. But, I'm convinced, my increasing age was the most important factor in causing my times to get worse. This fact is a sad reversal of the situation when I was in my 40s and 50s -- when a training program, good conditioning, paid off in climbing ability, swamping any effect, if any in fact occurred, from my advancing years.
For years, I climbed Mt. Si at least once per summer. Usually, as a way of kicking off the hiking season, but sometimes just because it's an enjoyable hike. However, for reasons I can't really recall, until today my last climb was in 2017. Sometimes the snow lasted late, and I was involved in other hikes as the summer progressed. Sometimes I was just lazy, I suppose. And last year was Covid-19, and I was (probably unnecessarily) afraid of hiking without a mask, a mask that would inhibit my breathing.
But, yes, today, I returned to the Big Hunk of Rock. I didn't do any mountain hiking all last year, and I was pretty sure that, together with aging, that fact would ensure that my time would be worse than it had been in 2017. I realized how bad my conditioning was within minutes of starting the hike. I was panting, and my legs felt wobbly. I seriously considered making a small plateau ("Snagg Flats"), about half way up the mountain, my destination -- and coming back for another attempt in another week or so. But I persevered, and the hiking got easier as I hiked upward.
But not real easy. In 2011, my time had been 1 hour, forty minutes. Six years later, it had increased -- to my shock -- to one hour, fifty-seven minutes. Today, as I staggered to the top, my watch showed that my time was two hours, thirteen minutes.
If I do a lot of hiking this summer, and try Mt. Si again in August or September, it probably will show an improved time. But I suspect that my days of conquering Mt. Si in under two hours are over. No matter how much I exercise.
But of course I'll try!
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