They Have Canyons in Seattle

Okay, not in Seattle, per se, but just a short drive out, you can find the south fork of the Snoqualmie river which cuts a pretty sweet canyon. My dad decided that we should check it out since it got pretty good reviews.  Once we got to the pools, we got an inkling as to why.  It's some pretty stuff.

The whole canyon is supposed to take 4-6 hours with about four rappels down waterfalls.  Due to a typo in the directions, we weren't able to find the trail head until really late in the day.  Luckily, there was a way to enter into the canyon halfway down so we opted for that...and a good thing too.  Turns out we are pretty slow hikers, especially when it comes to trekking down a mossy, boulder-filled creek bed.  That sucker ended up taking us almost 5 hours and we even bailed early out by clambering up a mossy cliff before doing the final rappel because we were worried about time.  I'm pretty glad we decided to do that impromptu climb, though, because it ended up being the most exciting part of the trip.  It looked like a relatively easy climb from below but halfway up, we realized that the only handholds were moss and a few crumbling, rotted tree roots.  We were at that awkward point where it would be too tricky to climb down but going up looked even more dangerous.  We decided that the best thing would be to make an anchor out of the most solid thing available (a fallen tree dangling down the cliff with it's roots still seemingly solidly planted) and Dad would belay me from there.  It did the trick because it gave me confidence that I likely wouldn't die if I fell so I was able to kinda just shimmy up and over the last 20 feet of moss crumbles and then belay him from the top.  Action packed adventure at it's best, I tell you.  All in all, quite good times.