Carbon River

I hiked to the Carbon Glacier from the Carbon River entrance to the Mt Rainier National Park. Instead of being a 3.5 mile hike from the Ipsut creek campground, it is now a 7-8 mile hike from the Park entrance due to road wash-outs. Next time I do this, I will definitely take a bike to ride the 4 miles to the campground. The road does have a few places where you may need to carry the bike around washouts, but overall it would be a much shorter hike. About 2 miles from the campground you have a choice of going across the Carbon river on several new small log bridges and walking the east side up to the glacier or going straight and going up the west side of the river and then taking a suspension bridge across to the glacier. Go up the east side. The west side trail is totally washed out and impossible to get through now and the park service said it may be years until it's fixed. People were working on the east side trail today, putting a log across a creek. The trail from where they were to the glacier still has a couple of trees across the trail and a large slide area to climb across rocks and stumps, but all is easy to get through. Thank you trail workers ! I haven't been on this trail for 30 years and took pictures of the glacier to compare to my old pictures. After all the press, I wasn't sure the glacier would be there with the global warming, but it is. However, it has definitely moved back. Beautiful and warm day and great exercise. Saw maybe 15 people all day including the people working on the trail. Noticed 2 groups of campers at the now-walk-in Ipsut campground.