Mowich Lake parking lot never filled up on this rainy/cloudy Monday. The trail was in great shape to Spray Falls and through Spray Park w no snow or obstacles. Wildflowers are peaking, and the meadows are beautiful right now. There was a cinnamon black bear cub and mom in Spray Park. I came out into a meadow and the cub was about 40 yards off the trail. I was able to get a few quick shots from the trail with my telephoto before moving on. I never saw its mother but saw her scat.  

After chewing dust and rinsing my eyes with my water bottle, the next challenge was finding a parking spot at Mowich Lake on a Sunday.

As luck had it, word on the street must have been, let's go to Tolmie Peak, as we dodged the bullet train of people and headed the opposite direction of most everyone else.

With the TH hidden in the back of the campground, we quickly found some solitude, a lovely forest and serene trail complete with the sounds of wildlife.

Our first stop was a nice view spot of Rainier and then on to Spray Falls. I mentioned to my son I made the mistake for years thinking the falls was at the bridge when it really was around the corner and down a hill.

The falls were magnificent today and easy to cross if you want to get your feet a little wet. 

As we headed into Spray Park we discovered many wildflowers blooming and a lovely spot for lunch just at the junction for Hessong Rock and Mt. Pleasant. 

7.5 miles 1800' elevation gain.

***Remember your America the Beautiful or Rainier park pass

Highly recommend! Long gravel drive to get there but totally worth it. Don’t be daunted by lots of cars in lot, there are multiple trailheads and a lake. Don’t stop your day at spray falls, make sure to go up switch backs to get to meadow for views of wildflowers and rainier!

A day full of surprises. We set off to climb Echo and Observation Rock, but ended up climbing First Mother and Echo and then running out of time to do Observation.

The road to Mowich Lake is in good condition, and at 7:30 am when we arrived there were only a couple of dozen cars at the trailhead, most looked like overnighters. Still plenty of parking space on the road. The trailhead privies are some of the nicest around with TP and hand sanitizer stocked. 

We took the trail to Knapsack Pass. It's a little hard to find this trail even if you know where it is. It's overgrown and tucked away near the ranger's cabin, so having a GPX track to follow to catch the unmarked trailhead was helpful. We only saw 2 other people on this part of the trail. I love the trail to Knapsack because it's interesting - kinda overgrown, kinda muddy, but never boring and almost nobody takes it. 

Once we reached the pass, the bugs got pretty bad. I was sorry to not have my head net. We decided to climb First Mother Mountain since it's not far off the trail. It's probably a class 2 scramble and overgrown, so once again the GPS track came in handy. The view from First Mother is extraordinary. 

Back at Knapsack pass, we descended south and crossed a couple of boulder fields with intermittent snowfields. These were not tough to cross though it's not clear where the "trail" is. The snow is still deep and firmly packed, and it was not difficult to cross on and off the snow. For here we found the trail and followed it to Spray park. Wildflowers are really popping, especially avalanche lily, paintbrush of all colors, shooting star, alpine aster, and many more.

At around 6360 feet of elevation there is a trail junction marked by a large pile of rocks: turn right here. The rest of the way to the base of Echo and Observation is a mix of snowfields, trails and boulder fields. We opted to travel on snow wherever possible as snow conditions were firm and not too slippery. There are plenty of water sources in this section, and we filtered water at a small clear pool with flowing water. We sat and ate our lunch while watching an incredible rainbow light show on the mountain, probably the result of an ice cloud. A nearby hiker whom we alerted to the phenomenon was colorblind, but he politely thanked us for letting him know about it anyway.

The snowfield leading up to Echo is somewhat steep, so we put on our micro spikes. Leading up to the base of Echo there is a mound of scree that was no fun to ascend. We went straight up but noticed on the way down that there was trail in the scree that started from a slightly higher elevation in the snow. We cached our poles and put on our helmets to ascend the boulder field. I had better luck ascending the big boulders to climbers right then the scree to climbers left. You'll reach a notch to climbers left of the peak where you can ascend safely, and then gradually work your way around to the summit. This was a super fun class 3 scramble though not without significant exposure.

After summiting Echo we realized we didn't have enough time to summit Observation before our turnaround time, so we headed back through the Spray Park trail. We saw a bear in upper Spray Park; it was about 30 feet off the trail and paid us no mind. The bear looked to be a juvenile. Bugs in Spray Park were bad but not the worst I've experienced in that area by far.

Overall, it was a wonderful day of adventuring. I was surprised we did not see many people out there at all, not even in Spray Park which is usually quite busy. 

Began hiking towards Spray park at 720 am, parking was busy/ mostly full and filling up on the road. Easy trail to Spray Park. Wildflowers peaking, go ASAP. Snow was already soft. We had no problem navigating through Seattle Park using yellow painted rocks and cairns to guide us. Crossing the Carbon on the suspension bridge was beautiful and fun. We planned to cross again on the “bridges” the White River ranger station told us were installed last week. The first is a slanted log across the raging Carbon river. My friend did a sit and scoot but I was too afraid. We heard the next was better and there’s several out you have to navigate coming up Ipsut back to Mowich. At this point we turned around and did the 10 miles back for a 20 mile day hike back through Seattle and Spray park. Spoke to two rangers one who said it was a temporary log and he was going to radio into Carbon river to tell them to stop sending people over it he spoke to 10+ people today who did not feel safe with the crossing. Overall a beautiful day and saw many friendly backpackers but overall a quiet trail returned at 6 pm to Mowich. I’d wait until the bridges are totally in before you go unless you are ok with the log crossing.