Cooper River, Cooper River Snowshoe — Sunday, May. 3, 2015

Snoqualmie Region > Salmon La Sac/Teanaway

Wonderful spring wildflowers and surprising solitude next to this cascading river. We arrived at the Salmon La Sac campground trail head (downstream access point) at noon to find only 4 cars in the parking lot. As soon as you start from the trail head, the river cascades through a narrow gorge. If what you want to do is hang out on the rocks and enjoy the river, stop here. We made a quick reconnaissance and continued up the trail. If you start looking, you will also see a grand variety of wildflowers - even a few glacier lilies remaining in a wet area on the right side of the trail before you start to climb away from the river. I am not expert at flower ID but I did recognize trillium, balsam root, yellow violets, calypso orchids, vanilla leaf, lupine, and paintbrush, plus several mystery blue flowers. You will get a few limited views of the river in the first stretch, but otherwise it is an undulating but net upward trail that parallels but remains out of sight of the river. The forest is pretty open, so likely to be hot and dry later in the season. One small and one large blow-down across the trail, both passable. We ambled along until we reached a decent stream crossing - noted for coming out from under and between two cedars. Maybe 2 miles to this point. We enjoyed our lunch and turned around (it is 4 miles to the other trail head at Cooper Lake), checking out a few more wildflowers off the main path and returned to the riverside rocks to sketch and relax. Saw only 5 people on the trail, expect more as camping season opens.