If I had to sum this hike up in 2 words it would be WILDFLOWERS and MOSQUITOS! We hit up Spray Park from Mowich Lake on Sunday. The road of course is gravel and washboarded, but no big potholes to speak of. Just lots of gravel and dust! The entire drive from Tacoma took about 1.5 hours (most of that on the gravel road). Low clearance cars will be fine.
The Mowich Lake parking area was full when we got there, with cars parking down the road, but we got a spot at the end of the line of cars (right at the Mowich Lake sign). Probably added another 1,000 steps onto our 21k steps that day. Popular destination for a Sunday at 10am! Luckily, the trail was pretty quiet, even with all the cars at the lot.
The first bit of trail takes off just past the toilets and is fairly flat through the forest with a couple of lovely babbling streams. We went straight for the switchbacks since we were so eager to see the meadow (then hit up Spray Falls on the way out). The trail is clearly marked whenever you hit a junction. The switchbacks are STEEP, but only go on for about a mile. And it is SO worth it! As soon as you hit the log bridge at the top of the climb, you will not be disappointed! It's like stepping into a wildflower wonderland. Even having been here before- I was just dropping my jaw every few minutes. The flowers are OUT in force, huge meadows of purple lupine, red paintbrush, white lilies, and even yellow and pink flowers that I don't know the names of. The trail keeps heading up through the meadow, so we slowed our pace and just enjoyed the views. The mountain is just breathtaking!
Unfortunately, the mosquitos also enjoyed their day. Even with long sleeves/long pants treated with permethrin, the mosquitos were swarming every time we even thought about slowing down. I don't recommend going with any limbs exposed... they will hunt you down and chomp you! I think the permethrin kept them from biting us, but they were still quite interested in being as close as possible. There is no stopping for lunch in any meaningful way (we had a walking snack).
I'm not sure if there's an obvious place to turn around, so we just kept going until our eyes couldn't handle anymore, and then turned around. Since we didn't stop to eat, it was nice to have the waterfall as a chill-out spot on the way down. Love this hike and will be back!!
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