Eastside Trail — Sunday, May. 24, 2020

We were looking for a hike that we could do with 3 children (9,10, and 14) and my 81 year old dad that would not be too crowded in Mount Rainer.  With highway 123 open, we chose to do the Eastside Trail, which from past experience we knew to be fairly lightly hiked.  We wanted to hike one way only, so we dropped one car at the turnoff to Steven Canyon/Grove of the Patriarchs (which unsurprisingly looked very crowded) and then drove to the trailhead close to Cayuse pass.  There were definitely quite a few cars at the trailhead, but nothing compared to Grove of the Patriarchs.  The trail drops quite steeply down for the first .4 miles to the junction with the Owyhigh Lakes trail.  By this point, we were already encountering a lot of snow on the trail.  In fact, if we had not hiked the Eastside Trail many times before, we likely would have missed the cutoff sign for the trail junction, as it was almost completely covered in snow (see photo).  We also looked for the Deer Creek backcountry camp, as we knew there would be an outdoor privy and needed one after the drive from Seattle.  It took a few attempts to find it in the snow, but find it we did, and were able to make use of it! (with lots of hand sanitizer, etc.)  We encountered about 2 other small groups around the Deer Creek area, but from that point until shortly before Grove of the Patriarchs, we basically saw no one else.  This was undoubtedly because of the nearly 2 miles of snow that cover the trail.  Hiking boots and hiking poles are essential - my one daughter didn't have hiking boots and definitely struggled (we gave her our hiking poles, and that helped).  The good news is the trail is still pretty obvious, even through the snow, so staying on the trail for the first 2 miles wasn't much of a problem.  Around 2 miles, the snow suddenly left us.  The next major impediments were the many, many downed trees on the trail.  I am guessing there were at least a dozen, and 2 of them were very challenging to get through (multiple trees downed together, a gigantic tangle of branches and sharp sticks up against a cliff).  We met a group at one of the tree-tangles - they were choosing to hike down a very steep hill to get around the trees - we were able to get through them, but it helped to hand off all our gear and poles to others in our party while we crawled, parted branches, and wiggled our way through).  There were many other simpler downed-trees that required crawling, but were fairly straightforward. Shortly before the junction with the Grove of the Patriarchs trail, we started hitting a few other groups of people.  The Grove itself looked quite crowded, and we were glad we weren't hiking there.

Despite the snow and downed trees, we had a fabulous time. The forest was beautiful and just waking from its winter slumber. There is every shade of green bursting from the remnants of last autumn's duff. The standout flowers were trillium and the calypso orchids, which we rarely see.  There are multiple waterfalls that are thundering with spring glacial melt.  All bridges were in place, and several major ones appeared new.  And as noted, we had the forest to ourselves for most of the hike, so it was a great choice for social distancing.