Trails for everyone, forever

Home Go Hiking Trip Reports Boulder River

Trip Report

Boulder River — Wednesday, Jun. 19, 2024

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

The access road needs a lot of work.  Would recommend only high clearance vehicles due to severe potholes for the entire length of the road (FSR2010000).  I wrote to the Forest Service to ask when they are going to re-grade it but only did so before doing this write-up.

The two falls are impressive.  One is within the first third of the hike, and the other is maybe at about the midpoint.  I would call the last half of the trail as the "Segment of seemingly interminable beauty".  It was beautiful but there was nothing to see and I found it kind of boring.  So, I made some observations to help pas the time:

As of 6/19/24 when I hiked, water was still running fairly well off the hillside.  

After the upper falls, there are 18 creeks that need to be crossed before you reach the end of the trail.  The creekbed immediately across from the upper falls was dry, so the counting starts from there.  I'm defining a creek as something that requires two or more steps to cross and you can hear the water running.

When the trail crosses one of the last creeks, it traverses a large rock/erratic before heading back into the woods.  I would say this is the 3/4 point of the trail.

While I did the hike in running shoes, there are enough muddy spots that in any wetter weather I would recommend hiking shoes or boots.

The late spring vegetation was overgrowing the trail in spots, but crews have obviously been working on clearing.

The end of the trail was a decent clearing, but no views other than the river itself.  There were few insects noticed except in the parking lot.

Did you find this trip report helpful?

Comments