Dirty Harry's Balcony

Last-minute Saturday plan. I looked out the window, saw the sun actually doing its job for once, and texted Badri. We got there later than you'd want but the lot had spots and the sky was still putting on a show. Good enough.

We saw a lot of birds on the way up and wondered why it was called the Birdhouse Trail. Never figured that out. We also wondered who Dirty Harry was. Turns out it has nothing to do with Clint Eastwood. The peak and the balcony are named after Harry Gault, a logger who worked this mountain in the 1940s. Just a guy named Harry, presumably dirty from work, who logged the whole thing. The mountain got his name. Clint Eastwood's movie came out thirty years later and the confusion has been great for trail marketing ever since.

We had not packed food. Not a bar, not a handful of trail mix. Nothing. By the time we hit the viewpoint we weren't thinking about views, we were thinking about tacos. The whole descent was a two-man food podcast. What to order, where to go, rice or fries, settled with the urgency of people who had genuinely earned an opinion.

About 1,400 feet of gain through old-growth fir and cedar, muddy in April, the kind that tests your grip. I wore a fleece at the start and dropped it twenty minutes in. We also briefly tried to hike to the wrong summit. Two minutes in, Badri checked the map. I'm counting that as good navigation. When the trail finally opens onto the rocky balcony and the whole Snoqualmie Valley is just sitting there below you, the ache feels right.

It's been a while since I did any cardio. Badri was patient in a way only a good hiking partner can be. First hike of the season. More to come.