We had intended to hike Mt. Williamson as the second of a two-day exploration of the area around Islip Saddle, but our dog, Frances, got sick the night of our Mt. Islip walk and we had to postpone the next day’s trip as a result. The intervening weekends have been full of events and commitments, but none of them have involved any hiking of appreciable length. So, with our first available window since late June, we decided to give Mt. Williamson another go. The PCT heads west from Islip Saddle up and over Mt. Williamson’s south shoulder before dropping back southwest to Hwy 2, doing so to avoid very steep terrain across the south face of the mountain (Hwy 2 does the same, except that it tunnels under the south face). The distance on the PCT from either trailhead is the same, so, given our mid-morning start, we chose to start from the western trailhead on the far side of the tunnels as it was bound to be shadier than the exposed east side of the mountain. We headed out just before 11am under cloudless skies, making good time for the first half-mile as we ascended through open sugar pine forest – however, Chris quickly tired of our pace and wound up taking a good 30 minutes to cover the first mile (insert lessons about proper conditioning here). After munching on an energy bar, he felt much better, and we soon found ourselves at the crest of the south ridge marked prominently by a cairn – at this point, we turned north up a well-traveled use trail that picks it way up the easternmost of Williamson’s three summits. Most of the use trails we travel are less than well-engineered, usually steep and poorly maintained. We were pleasantly surprised that this one was nicely routed and unexpectedly gentle for the first two hundred yards – perhaps not unexpectedly, this quickly changed as we hit a significantly steeper section below the eastern summit. We picked our way upward, gaining about 300′ in a quarter mile, but the grade leveled out a bit and we found the open east summit before us at 8,214′. A couple of small cairns were here but not much else, so we continued west along the ridge toward the middle summit. The HPS guide notes that, although neither the marked summit (which is the eastern) nor the true high point (which is the western at 8,248′), the middle summit at 8,244′ is where the summit register is located – not. Two large cairns mark the middle summit, but we could not locate a register anywhere in the vicinity, despite an exhaustive search – the abundance of nice rocks and fallen logs for sitting do make this the best spot on the mountain for eating lunch or taking an extended break. We pushed westward over easy terrain to the west summit – here, we again found no register but were rewarded with the most open views along the ridge. To the north, we could easily see a debris field on a lower ridge – some online research revealed that this is the site of a 1966 plane crash, where an Air Force cargo plane went down killing the four unfortunate reservists aboard. The site is well-preserved with much of the plane’s structure intact, but we’ll save exploring that for another day. We had both turned on our phone’s GPS tracking function for a fitness app we’re using, and Jane realized her battery was quickly dying – we headed back east down the ridge, stopping briefly by the east summit to unsuccessfully locate a summit register, before retracing our steps back to the PCT. Once back on the main trail, Jane took off like a crazy woman, her breakaway opening up a large time gap ahead of the peloton (Chris). Down the trail we flew, Chris half-running to keep up – with about a mile to go, he reeled her in, probably due more to the fact she had given up hope of beating her phone’s battery to the finish and had slowed down considerably. In any event, we before long found ourselves back at the van, completing the 5+ miles in just over three hours, a pretty slow pace all things considered. Still, the weather and views were both great, and we look forward to our next hike, once the aches and pains of the rapid descent fade away…