Beautiful day trip up to Spray Park. Arrived at Mowich at 8:45a. Lots of cars, but plenty of parking and few people. Trail up only saw around 6 people. Trail in great condition. Absolutely bluebird cloudless sky made the views absolutely spectacular. Could see Baker from several areas near Seattle Park. Bugs in the upper meadow were ok when moving  or when I could catch a breeze but made a feast of me when stopped. More people coming up as I descended, but by no means crowded. Lots of good lunch spots open. Wildflowers were beautiful! Took the spur to Spray falls which was worth the detour. Last quarter mile back up hill to Mowich was a little tough on the old quads, but a cool soak in the lake eased the sore muscles.

A wildflower update for Spray Park and the bootpath towards Observation Rock. The flower volume at Spray Park dropped off a lot since I was there on Aug 26th. There are still a lot of blooms, but most of the flowers you will see are fading or gone to seed. There are some strong patches of lupine and bistort. There is still a fair amount of magenta paintbrush, the fading ones produce beautiful colors (cover photo). There are some spots that recently melted; you can see fresh magenta paintbrush, pink mountain heather, yellow Rainier lousewort, purple speedwell, yellow cinquefoil, pink laurel, and even a few avalanche lilies. At the high point of the Spray Park trail (about 4 miles), there is a bootpath to the right that heads up a ridge. This trail goes on for about .7 mile. Some of the cliff paintbrush is still in bloom on this trail, picture 2. There is a lot of it that has faded to orange and yellow. You can also still find dwarf mountain lupine, gentian, and many other flowers in bloom here. The trail leads to a good viewpoint of Observation and Echo, complete with a living room's worth of rocks to sit on.  

Hiked from mowich lake through spray park to cataract valley camp. Camped there for two months nights then back out through spray park.

Clear weather, beautiful wildflowers, awesome views. Really enjoyed the hike.

(below this point info is about the trail beyond the turnaround point WTA gives)

Bugs were fine while you keep moving. staying in one spot near water I got bit pretty bad. bring DEET.

Snowfields are not bad to cross, although they were a bit slushy. poles help a lot but not required. Beyond spray park there is some loose rock to cross. again, poles help but not required.

Fabulous hike under clear skies. Easily found parking at 10 am on a Tuesday morning. Encountered some other day hikers and backpackers throughout the day but the trail was never crowded and we had much of it to ourselves. Wildflowers still blooming - maybe another week or 10 days? Hiked well into Spray Park - just couldn't resist "one more meadow". Encountered some biting bugs up in the meadows and especially near the stream but they were not too bad. The mountain was out in all her glory. Side trip to the falls was short and well worth it.

Summary

I did a clockwise loop starting from Mowich Lake, following the unmaintained Knapsack Pass Trail up to Mount Pleasant, then across the ridge towards Hessong Rock, and finally descending to Spray Park and following the Spray Park trail back to Mowich Lake. This added up to 7 miles and 2960 vertical feet of gain.

Road/Trailhead

The last 16 miles of road are gravel. The good news is that the potholes are few and generally not deep. The bad news is there is some degree of washboarding for almost the full 16 miles. The road is in better shape than I remember it from years past, however the distance on washboard it quite demoralizing.

I arrived at the trailhead a bit before 9:30 am on a sunny Tuesday. There were still at least 10 spots left in the pull-in parking at Mowich Lake and plenty more parallel parking between the Spray Park and Tolmie Peak trailheads. The privy is open and in good shape.

Trail

The Knaspack Pass trail can be found by following the rightmost trail out of the campground around the shore to the patrol cabin. At the patrol cabin it turns inland and before the outhouses there is an End of Maintained Trail sign. From this point all the way to the pass the trail is fairly obvious and in pretty good shape. There were a couple short muddy sections and one section that had evergreens encroaching that needed to push through, but I did the whole section in shorts and t-shirt and had no regrets.

On the east side of Knapsack Pass, the trail immediately begins descending a steepish talus slope. There is a faint trail followable here. Currently following that faint trails spits you out on a steepish section of snow - without microspikes/crampons you will either need to kick some laborious steps for a while to get you down to a shallower slope or commit to glissading down a bit. The runout is safe so there's not much issue with this.

Once down to the shallower slopes, there's a few sections of alternating talus and lingering snow, all easy to cross, with a tarn and some obvious trail in the middle of it all. Finally there is a larger section of lingering snow that the trail curves around before getting back onto dirt for the climb up to the Mount Pleasant ridge. There are some cairns sprinkled throughout this basin between Knapsack Pass and Mount Pleasant, however they are not always easy to spot and sometimes they seem to be taking you off in the wrong direction. Having a GPS track to follow helps a lot - the OSM track is quite true to the correct route for this section.

Once off the final snow, you're on standard sub-alpine trail up to the junction with the Mount Pleasant trail. At that point you have a choice of dropping down on a trail that heads SE in the direction of Seattle & Spray Parks or one that heads WSW towards Mount Pleasant.

The Mount Pleasant trail heads straight up to the summit - there are some side trails/deer trail to the side, but the main trail sticks to the ridge here. After the summit, the trail comes to a fork where it looks like there's a descent on the left and the main trail sticking to the ridge, but the ridge trail cliffs-out shortly thereafter. Take the left fork and descend a bit and then the trail is obvious from here all the way to the saddle. From the saddle I took the trail to the west for a ways to get a look around the back of Hessong Rock. I didn't follow it all the way to the summit - there's a section that looks steep and loose and has large cliffs to the right of it.

The descent from the Hessong-Pleasant saddle is steep and unpleasant - it's loose dirt and pebbles all the way down the steepest portion - though that's mercifully short. There is also a deer/goat trail that starts towards the right but quickly grows fainter and fainter. The real trail is a bit to the left and is an obvious trail all the way down.

Once down to Spray park, the main trail is in good shape all the way back to Mowich.

If I were to do this hike again, I would skip the section west of Mount Pleasant, backtrack from the summit to the junction, and take the shallower descent that heads towards Seattle & Spray Parks.

There were no bugs on the trail until the start of the climb out of the basin. From there the bugs got more and more frequent and annoying up through the ridge, with quite a few mosquitoes up there.

There was a short section of nice wildflowers on the climb up from the basin to the Mount Pleasant ridge. There are still some lingering flowers at Spray Park but both the flowers & tarns there are well past peak.