We left Seattle at 6:10 am and were pleasantly surprised to be on the trail at 8 am! There is limited parking at the trail head so plan to get there early. When we arrived all of the actual parking spots were filled, but there were still a good number of pull-off spots on the side of the road.
The trail starts off easy as it follows Fryingpan Creek up a valley under old-growth trees. After thirty minutes of hiking the trail has a nice overlook of a roaring cascade on Fryingpan Creek. The first 3+ miles of the trail went rather quickly and we reached a log crossing (with a nice handrail) over Fryingpan Creek at 9:15 am.
At this point, the trail begins to open up a little with some meadows before it begins switchbacking up towards Summerland. We reached the shelter at Summerland soon after and took our first lunch break. We had views of the mountain, but Panhandle Gap was shrouded in clouds as we ate our lunch. As soon as we finished eating, the clouds quickly dissipated and we could see the path ahead through beautiful alpine meadows!
Soon after we began hiking, we spotted our first Marmot running quickly by. The trail transitioned from alpine meadows to rocks and there were a couple easy snow crossings followed by a creek crossing on a log bridge (no handrail on this one but easy to cross nonetheless).
Several hundred vertical feet below the gap, the trail transitioned to fairly continuous snow. It was not too steep and there were nice steps kicked into it. We did not bring hiking poles and were fine without them, but I would imagine that many people would prefer to have them here. We left the trail just before the final push to the gap to take a look at the grassy slopes to the East of the trail. I was curious if I could see the Cowlitz Chimneys from here, but I could not. We finished off the final bit of trail to the gap on snow and arrived at 11:30 am.
Views on the South side of the gap were non-existent as the landscape was shrouded in clouds, but we were still able to enjoy clear views of Rainier and Little Tahoma. It was slightly more difficult hiking down the snowy sections than anticipated so, once it was safe, I decided to glissade a small section. We ran into a few more marmots as we retraced the trail back towards Summerland.
We ran into most hikers on their way up between the gap and the climb up to Summerland and mostly had the lower part of the trail to ourselves on the way out. We cruised out and reach the trailhead at 1:45 pm.
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