Elisa and I did a quick Saturday hike in the sunshine in the Cougar Mountain wildlife area: King County Virtual Map Counter: Cougar Mountain.

We started at the Red Town trailhead and got onto the Cave Hole Trail, to the By Pass to Fred's Railroad Trail and then back on Quarry to Red Town.

In addition to lots of cave holes (the trail is well named) we saw lots of trees snapped and down from the 2006 windstorm. The caves are considered dangerous due to cave-in and poisonous gasses (methane, I believe). Along the way, we'd see remains of abandoned structures. I have no idea what they were and they linger there in anonymity.

Red Town is one of those settlements that no longer exist. Newcastle / Coal Creek was quite the coal mining area. I flipped through one of our history books, A Hidden Past: An Exploration of Eastside History, and discovered that 10 million tons of coal was harvested from the Newcastle fields (the last company closed up in 1963).

Wow.