Palouse to Cascades Trail - Cedar Falls to Change Creek, Cedar Butte, Olallie State Park - Olallie Trail & Mount Washington — Monday, May. 12, 2025

Decided to day hike up Mt. Washington the long way. Started at the Cedar Falls TH on the Cascades to Palouse (Rattlesnake Parking lot in North Bend. Face the ledge & then turn your body 180 degrees & go that direction). Walked East around 3/4 of a mile to the Cedar Butte trail. The TH is signed but may be easy to miss if you're not paying attention. Cedar Butte moderately gains elevation for a mile or so to a very easy to miss intersection where you either take a left to summit the butte (which is clearly signed & easy to spot) or go right to head toward the Olallie trail (which is the part that is easy to miss), which is what I did. For the next mile or so, this rarely used portion of the trail is a bit overgrown with a couple of easy to navigate blow downs. It steeply heads down a ravine, meanders around for a 1/2 mile or so, then steeply heads up to connect to the Olallie. Gaiters will help in this section, which I didnt wear & was pretty wet afterwords. I avoided this section on the way back, opting to take the Olallie all the way to Cascades to Palouse in order to keep dry. Plus, it rained quite a bit after I initially went through & was certainly worse. Either way, I digress. Once connected to the Olallie Trail, I was rewarded with a trail in excellent condition, which was certainly built for bicycles. The track had endless switchbacks & wasted a ton of time ascending up the ridge (I'm not complaining). Once you gain the ridge, Its a long traverse, followed by an easy climb (more flatish switchbacks) up 500 or so feet, followed by another longish traverse to meet up with the Mt. Washington trail. As reported last week, the snow is melted. I crossed 1 small bit, which will be gone in the next couple of days. Once at the summit, I saw a party of 3 hikers, which were the only people I saw the entire day. Stats according to Garmin: 17 miles out & back, 4550 ft up/down, just shy of 7 hours total/6 hours moving.