Mount Washington — Sunday, Jul. 13, 2025

A rough and somewhat overgrown trail with a great Rainier view payoff at the top.

Chose this for a shady and less busy trail option on a warm Sunday. There were 6 cars ahead of me in the lot at 7:30am and the lot was full when I came back down four hours later with cars parallel parked opposite the head-in parking making pulling out a bit tricky. The gravel road to the parking is very short and has only a few trivial bumps.

The trail felt harder than its stats suggest. The tread is quite rough and often consists of loose rock. A quarter of the trail felt like walking up a dry creek bed. There are few sections that have significant vegetation encroaching, the worst coming immediately after the big open rock slide section. I put sunglasses on fairly early in the trail just to protect my eyes from all the branches.

There are some wildflowers blooming sporadically throughout the hike, with foxglove in many places and more variety higher up. There were some bugs causing minimal annoyance along the whole trail and quite a few mosquitoes causing significant annoyance at the top.