After church Sunday morning I drove over to Little Mountain to explore some trails that have been built since I moved away from Mount Vernon. Parked on the south side of the hill on a really small trailhead in a neighborhood, I can't imagine very many people use this access.
I puttered out a logging road and back, then found a cairn leading up the hill. A steep intro got me on a really neat network of trails and I kind of picked routes hoping they'd keep heading toward the top. About 20 minutes of steady, but not intense, climbing put me back on the road that goes to the summit, which I recognized, so I rounded out the last few minutes of climb on pavement. Spent two minutes at the top enjoying the view, then headed down a different route that was fairly technical (for the PNW) in places, had a really cool north-facing viewpoint that is new, and eventually connected back to the original trail.
My right ankle/foot really started to hurt on the way down, it wasn't something from Saturday's race but another nagging thing I noticed at basketball last Thursday. Nothing hurts while climbing up, but the pounding on the downhill really was beating it up. I'll want to watch it.
55:00 overall, not really sure on the distance so I'll ballpark it.
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