Duckabush River — Monday, Sep. 15, 2025

I spent one lovely, peaceful night along the Duckabush River! This was my first ever backpacking trip, I was solo, carrying all of my gear, and I was so humbled by the weight of my pack so my plans for spending the night at 5-Mile Camp quickly downgraded to 2-Mile Camp haha. I arrived at the trailhead at 11:45am on a Monday morning and saw six other cars. I was nervous about most of the spots at 2-Mile being taken up because of the amount of people at the trailhead, but I only passed one couple on my way in, and I found every campsite to be available! I chose the one that is kind of separated from the true 2-Mile Camp, the first site that is off the trail a bit to the left. You go downhill a little and are met with a small but spacious, beautiful, multi-level campsite. You're decently off the trail, and the spot is pretty private. You can kind of peer in from the trail, but you're mostly pretty cozy and hidden. I set up my tent on the higher dirt level, and then you have a little staircase of roots down to your private riverside beach area. What a lovely spot! Somebody took some serious time and effort to build a little shelter/hut out of logs and sticks and branches, it was a very nice touch! I was seriously impressed and grateful to this person, this little hut served as my kitchen/reading area. After setting up camp and relaxing for a few hours, I took a little golden hour hike up to the lunch rock. I saw nobody else camping nearby as the sun was setting, lucky me! As I ate dinner, the grouse started to drum (if you know, you know - even though I knew it was just grouse, the sound reverberates throughout the forest so deep, it still freaked me out!). I went to bed around 8pm and had the worst sleep I have ever had (to no fault of the location, the river was very relaxing to fall asleep to), but it was so worth it to wake up early in the morning to the beauty of Duckabush as my personal backyard for the day. The bugs were not a concern at all which was very nice. Just a couple around at night, and a few in the morning, but nothing miserable or annoying. I took yet another hike up to the lunch rock before packing up. This is when I saw only the second person of the whole trip! Reluctant to leave my little slice of heaven, I ended up finally hiking out around 11:45am. About 1/2 mile from camp, I saw a bear! I have never seen any wildlife along this trail before. Before I saw him, I heard him crashing through the brush about 50 feet to the left off the trail. I thought at first that maybe it was an off-trail hiker coming through, but then I saw a big tan moving object. All I could see at first was tan, I thought it was a cougar and my life was coming to an unfortunate close. But as he continued emerging, I saw it was just a nice black bear fellow. I don't think he even looked at me, but if he did he couldn't care less and continued his journey uphill and deep into the forest, away from me thankfully. Definitely an exciting way to end the trip!