Hamilton Mountain Evening Hike

9 miles of hiking • 2500' elevation gain •

I was on call this weekend so no day hiking for me, but it was too nice of a day not to get out so after work, we took a quick trip up to Hamilton Mountain for an evening hike. This was my second time doing this hike. The first time was just about 11 months ago. took us 6 hours last time to do this loop. This time it only took 3.5 hours. We nearly cut our time in half. Just goes to show how much our hiking endurance has improved this past year. We only saw 3 small groups of people heading out as we were headed in about 6:30 pm. After that, not another soul other than the 2 bunnies we saw on the way down. There was a sign at the TH mentioning that 2 cougars were seen at mile 2.7 on 5/22/15. Thankfully we did not come across those in our trip. We made it to the summit right before sunset and the final few miles were via headlamp. We made it back to the car at 10:05 pm. I'm still in shock with how quickly we made the trip considering the first two miles of this trip make my calves want to scream and beg me to stop lol. What a fantastic way to spend a Saturday night in the Pacific Northwest!