The road to the trailhead was passable for any car, but very very slow going. The Suiattle River road past about mile 13 was quite washboarded, and the Green Mountain road had large pokey rocks. My car had no issues, but it took me well over an hour from HWY 530 to the TH. The trail was in good shape aside from some overgrown vegetation in the first meadow section. Flowers were blooming everywhere, and huckleberries were ripe in places. My dog and I had the trail to ourselves for the majority of the hike as it was a Sunday evening. We were highly entertained by the playful marmots and lovely views!

I exited Green Mountain trailhead today, July 27th after a multi day backpacking trip.

As I exited at noon, I came across a thief breaking into car windows. It destroyed a 4runners back window and I don't know how many other cars were smashed. They were on to the next one

When the getaway driver saw me, they tore off. I chased them down, got their license # (CSC0620) off their black 95 Subaru Outback Legacy (not a hatchback), and called the cops. They tore off driving at dangerous speeds.

If you are the victim of these scumbags, now you have their plates, which do match their car.

man: tan and bald
woman: white, trashy hair and glasses.

I was the 3rd car pulled up at the parking lot this morning at 8:45 am.
The road was rough, 24 miles from the Hwy 530.
The first 9.5 miles is paved, the next part is a classic forest road; Full of potholes. but it's not too bad, I managed to drive my Elantra to the trailhead.

The trail is extremely beautiful. the switchbacks on the exposed ridges are very brushy/ overgrown. It's better to wear a breathable pant. I found that part is tricky, especially the views around you are astounding.
if you're not focusing on your footing, then you can easily get tripped in that overgrown part.

The bugs were not too bad, although it was mostly cloudy today with the temperature was at 50 degrees.
Marmots were all out though today, and they were talking so much!
There was a big one at the Lookout, who was constantly trying to get food out of my backpack. 😄

Sadly, Glacier peak was hiding behind the clouds today. Perhaps I need to come back again here!

Overall, I absolutely enjoyed this hike. I saw barely 15 people in the whole hike.

BTW there is no Toilet at the Trailhead.

To beat the heat today, my friend & I started hiking at 6am, and we didn't see anyone else until we were half way down from the top. About 1.3 miles in, we emerged from the woods and into a very overgrown bushy section for a little under a mile. It's so overgrown that at times it was hard to see the ground and I accidentally slipped down once since I couldn't tell it was more slopey at that spot. But views started to open and we could see Glacier Peak better and better. Then it was a bit more of woods until we got to a small lake just a bit under the 3 mile mark. We can see the lookout from there, and it looked so discouragingly far away. But I was surprised to find that it's not bad at all the last mile up. Marmots were whistling at us as we got up (likely because they saw my dog). There was a really large one on a rock just below the lookout, and there were also two juvenile ones hanging out around the lookout. They were boxing each other and generally not afraid of us or my dog, who was staring at them. 

We did not see a chewed up hiking pole as mentioned in the previous post. It's probably a trophy hanging on the wall of a marmot den by now. 

The lookout itself was closed. Even though google map said it's open 9-5 M-F (we didn't believe that, just thought it's funny Google gave it hours of operation). The railing on one side had collapsed but the other 3 sides were solid. 

Mosquitoes started to get bad around the small lake area, and it's probably the worst at the lookout.  The views on top more than make up for the blood donation to the mozzies. 

No snow on the trail at all, and the couple down trees were pretty easy to step over.

Our GPS said 8 miles round trip and 2800ft elevation gain. 

The road in was pretty long, it took about 1.3 hours from the turn off of 503 to the trailhead. It was paved for about half the way. Potholes were annoying but not horrible. Parking lot itself was relatively small, probably will fit only about 10 cars. But the road goes a little bit beyond the parking lot so parking along that section is likely ok.

Well. A marmot stole our hiking pole. More on that later. 

My husband was delighted to finally take me up Green Mountain for an early anniversary hike. Our compromise in planning was to hike it in July before the heat of August, sacrificing the ripeness of berries later in summer,  but we thoroughly enjoyed the wildflowers and views! We did time it with the heat of July, but an 8 am start time avoided the worst of the heat.

The road up is navigable, though exercise your pothole-dodging skills. (I actually enjoy the challenge). Terrain-wise, the trail is pretty consistently inclined to make your cardiovascular system kick nicely into gear, and stay that way. If we stopped, we were devoured by mosquitos. Best to not stop. We set out at 8 am with one other car parked, though we never saw the hiker, and had the place to ourselves until passing 8 people in 3 groups on the descent.

Glacier Peak is my husband's second love,  and boy are you constantly rewarded with stellar views during the hike! It's absolutely worth the climb. I marked this as snow-free, but there are a couple of lingering areas trailside where one can ice ones knees, or scrape down to clean snow and store under your hat for a cool down.

All of this leads to the lookout. Gorgeous views again, and adorable marmots crawling all over. I had a lovely time chatting with them and taking their beauty shots, up until one screamed EVER so loud about 4 feet from me and I jumped just about as high. We had a good laugh, snacked at the lookout until the bugs won the war and chased us off, then went to collect our poles. My husband had left his maybe 10 feet from the lookout. One remained. The other? Gone! Where? There! In that marmot's possession as it chewed on the handle and dragged the pole across and over the ridge. Couldn't believe it. So, if you happen upon a well-chewed green Black Diamond trekking pole on Green Mountain, please let me know. I'm not planning to use it again, but it would make a fun wall mount.