The rest of the center trail was fine, but I wanted to climb one or both sides as well. I got about ten steps into one side trail on the West side, and turned back because of mud and leaves. Same thing with another one heading East. At least there was a nice view of the sky once I made it to the top.
A little trivia that I've surely mentioned before. The building in the bottom of the photo is Boeing's Everett Factory, which is the world's largest building by volume. And I just learned while looking that up that the second largest building by usable volume, Target's import warehouse, is also in Washington state.
Since I didn't want to go back the way I came, that left only one option.
4.71 miles in 1:32, 10,121 steps, 596ft gain
I really don't enjoy that huge zig-zag, but at least it's paved.
Yesterday was a very long day. Obviously there were breaks like this walk involved, but I started work at 4am and got home from a work meeting at 7:10pm. The drives to and from campus went pretty well thanks to the express toll lanes on I-405, but my back was still pretty sore from the car seat. Today will be a yoga day. I planned to sleep in and turned my alarm off before going to bed, but managed to wake up at 3:59 instead of 4:00 without it. Not sure why if my internal alarm clock works so well that I can't also turn it off.