North Fork Sauk River — Sunday, Jun. 2, 2019

This is lovely old-growth forest-- some of the nicest I've ever seen in the Cascades. There's one small creek crossing about a mile and where our feet got wet but in general the trail is very nice. This time of year there's just enough running water for your dog if you forget to bring a little bowl, though you don't generally have access to the Sauk, which was absolutely raging. We turned around at the river crossing, at 4 miles, but you don't need to go far at all to see the exceptional forest (the cedar groves in particular are nicest at the beginning). On this beautiful sunny Sunday we saw a large group of about 10 skiers heading back from earning their turns, a large group of backpackers coming back, and maybe 12 or so other people. I was actually surprised that we saw as many people as we did given that we had to drive on about 14 miles of unpaved road (including the unpaved stretch of Mountain Loop Highway), however, if you took away the two large groups there wouldn't have been many at all.

It took us about 2 hours and 10 minutes to get to the trailhead from our home near Greenlake. There are a few rough spots that require some clearance, but any crossover would be fine. In general the road is pretty good; narrow but without any steep drop offs.