Little Si

November 12, 2023

475m

North Bend, WA

Little Si is one of the most popular hikes in the state of Washington and does not need much introductory. About 7 years ago I had hiked and scrambled the nearby Mt. Si and I finally decided to come back for the little one this year. Both Mt. Si and Little Si were done in November. This may or may not due to coincidence because it’s difficult to come up with suitable objectives at this time of a year, so the ones with maintained trails are usually preferable. For obvious reasons I would not have driven from Vancouver just to do Little Si, and instead I opted to combine this hike with a snowshoe ascent of Hawkins Mountain in Cle Elum valley to make a full day outing. There’s no correlation between these two objectives nor are them in the same area, but this was just how the day panned out. The decision to add Little Si at the end of the day was completely random and spontaneous. Kate was very surprised but reluctantly agreed.

Little Si via the hiking route. GPX DL

The parking is usually chaotic for any hike in this area but it was already 3 pm with a mere more hour of daylight. The parking lot was still almost full but we did find a spot. We decided to carry only 1 backpack and the most important gear was actually the head-lamps. I did grab a bottle of water along with some food and this hike did turn out to be longer than I thought. I was expecting a round trip of 1 hour but I clearly did not do my homework. The round trip distance was over 6 km and the elevation gain was over 300 m. We ended up finishing in 1 hour 25 minutes to beat the head-lamp time but we were jogging most of the downhills. In any case there’s little worth documenting asides the few mediocre viewpoints near the summit. We did take our time taking photos.

A mediocre viewpoint not far from the trail-head
This viewpoint required stepping off the path, but it was worth the extra “effort”
Kate on the wet trail
As typical as one could expect from Little Si
The first viewpoint slightly under the summit
A full view from this viewpoint including Mt. Si
Mt. Washington south of I-90
Kate arriving at the summit of Little Si
Me on the summit of Little Si
Kate posing above North Bend
Kate with the imposing cliffs of Mt. Si
One last photo of Kate on Little Si

I could see a few more (potentially better) viewpoints if we scrambled down from the summit, but we decided to not linger too long up there as time’s getting on. I made Kate to walk ahead and she ended up running most, if not all of the downhills and some of the flats. I was able to keep up and we eventually got back to the vehicle minutes before needing to use the head-lamps. I then drove us to Bellevue for a deserved dinner in Cheesecake Factory before resuming the long drive homewards. It was pouring cats and dogs from Bellevue all the way back to White Rock.

We ran most of the way down.
Not far from the trail-head.
A much-needed dinner in Cheesecake Factory