Adventures in Hiking: Teneriffe Falls (Kamikaze Falls)

We hit up Teneriffe Falls in North Bend today with quite a group in tow! We have friends who recently moved into a house in Snoqualmie and invited them to join us on the hike today!

Summary below, pictures will be added later!

The mighty Yang

In addition to Eric and the kidlet, we also had a little dog named Ying whose human parents were going snowboarding. Our friends, Cortney and Dave also brought two of their fur children, Minnie and Mandy. It was a gorgeous day today, with temperatures in the low to mid 50s and clear skies. Mount Si was looming as we drove to the trailhead.

The trailhead is little more than an extended bus turnaround and was PACKED to bursting this gorgeous weekend day.

You can divide the trail into 3 parts, each of them a mile. You start off with a gentle grade through DNR land on a wide track that's basically an unpaved road. The second growth forest reaches up around you and the air is fresh and clean.

At the first major intersection you turn right and the road picks up grade. Suddenly our thighs were burning, but we'd experienced nothing at that point. After a mile of midgrade, the trail to the falls took off to the right again.

This is when the switchbacks started. The trail is new and it's pretty awesome, but it does cross rock screes. You're not scrambling, but you also can't ignore where you're stepping. The dogs were having a ball, the kidlet, on the other hand, had decided just before mile three that she was done being carried by Dad and would only tolerate Mom.

So I got to carry a 17 pound baby up the steepest portion of the trail and in poorly fitting boots since I'd forgotten my own and was borrowing Dave's. Somehow, I managed to not only nurse her while hiking, but then also soothe her to sleep while scrambling up rocks. I'm really not going to be surprised if she grows up to love being outdoors. I'll admit that's my hope, of course...

Anyway, the switchbacks on the exposed mountainside quickly had us pulling off jackets in the sun, though it got chilly quickly once we were back under the trees. The switchbacks were terrible and once the kidlet woke up and I could trade her back to my husband it felt like I was LEAPING up the mountain! Man, that feeling, that sudden lessening of almost 20 pounds was super inspirational for me to want to lose more weight. Though I know the effect won't be dramatic, I have already lost 20 and realizing that I was hiking with that extra weight 2 years ago and knowing now that I move so much easier without that extra bulk just reminds me how far I've come.

We finally reached the falls! The spray coming off in the breeze was FREEZING. Jackets were quickly put back on. Cortney and Dave climbed up a bit further to get some more views of the falls while Eric and I stayed down below because we (read: me) didn't trust the footing to carry the baby up or down the steep slope.

We recharged and snacked at the falls, then started the trip back down! The dogs had a ball meeting the other hikers and dogs on the trail and it was a great day!