Indian Bar - Summerland Traverse, Summerland - Panhandle Gap — Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024

All the years I’ve been hiking in Rainier and I have never been to this area of the park until this trip. I am a complete idiot because this was unbearably gorgeous at every turn. 

Parked a car at Box Canyon Thursday 8/8 and headed over to start at Summerland. At 4:30pm on a Thursday there was no issues parking, as we assumed. Started up at 4:45p and let me say the flies are horrible right now. They were all over me and I had to resort to 100% deet rather quickly. Flowers are beautiful in the forest, and the trail was pretty chill the entire way up.

With photos and meandering, we reached Summerland camp exactly 3hrs after starting at 7:45pm. We had the group site here, and this was the bougiest campsite I’ve ever been to in the backcountry. If you haven’t been and have the group site reserved, know that you can leave your tents at home! The shelter is big enough for 8 sleeping pads/bags with room to spare. No issues with rodents or anything, and we had a nice breeze throughout the night. 

Our next day was 10 or so miles to Nickel Creek, so we planned to take our time and enjoy all the meadows. After filling up on water, we set out at 8:45a. A few marmots running around, but it was still early for them to all be out and about (understandable). The trail up to Panhandle Gap wasn’t bad, a few snowfields that weren’t hard to cross. The last one at the top (or first if you’re coming down) is a no fall area, and you can either go over it or below. It’s not a long section, but it’s super steep and you’d go right into a pile of boulders. Our group did the top, I did the bottom. If going up to the gap, the bottom route isn’t the worst. If going down to Summerland, I’d really try and take the top route. Getting up from it back to the trail was already hard trying to climb up kitty litter sad and moving rocks, but going down looks even more miserable. 

Once over the gap, it’s just sweeping view upon sweeping view. Or usually it would be. The haze was thick on Friday and there weren’t many views to be had. Rainier was still visible in all her glory, but out towards Goat Rocks was pretty much nonexistent. Lots of marmots and grouse up here. Some flowers up here, mostly heather and monkeyflower. 

Heading down to Indian Bar is when the flower show really started. It’s past peak, but still amazing. I have never seen so much aster in my life - it was like a carpet as far as your eyes could see (you can make out the purple when you’re at Indian Bar, but it’s pretty muted from that far down). We took a long time walking down from here to just enjoy everything. Blueberries are also between being completely ripe and still green. Down at Indian Bar, the group shelter is surrounded by flowers, and also one where you don’t need a tent if you have that spot. Magenta paintbrush was prominent throughout, and makes the red paintbrush look boring in comparison. 

If you’re going the way we did, once you leave Indian Bar, you immediately have about 600’ of uphill ahead of you. Make sure you fill up on water before leaving, as we didn’t come across any until Nickel Creek.  There’s more down and then up through this section, and I started to feel it hard here. I was also having a pretty severe flare up of plantar fasciitis which was making every step incredibly painful. Trying to take it slow, but thunder in the distance didn’t help. Tons of beargrass and lupine in this area, both at peak. And one lone tiger lily. 

Down to nickel creek seemed to take forever, and once in the forest it was really humid. This was the first area I noticed mosquitoes, but it as mostly more of the pesky flies. We got to the nickel creek campsites at 8pm or so, and decided that we’d rather just hike the .8mi out rather than stay and do it in the morning. It was far too hot and humid there and we knew we wouldn’t be comfortable. Crossing the creek wasn’t an issue - there’s logs to cross a little ways down that are solid to walk on. 

This is definitely a spot I’d come back to in the instant, and would love to see it when it’s right at peak bloom and during fall colors.