Fay Peak, Hessong Rock and Mount Pleasant & Spray Park — Saturday, Jul. 29, 2023

Ridgeline loop to tag 4 peaks around Mowich area of Rainier: Fay, East Fay, Pleasant and Hessong. We dropped down to Spray Park to complete our loop. Comfort with some exposure and scrambling skills required for Fay & East Fay ridgeline, downloading GPX tracks helped us stay on course in a few spots. This loop ended up being 8.5 miles and 3450' gain. 

Parking & road: arrived at the Mowich lake/campground area around 8:30 on a Saturday morning and parking was already down the road past the Tolmie trailhead, this added about an extra half mile each way to our trip. The road to Mowich is dusty and washboarded, with only a few potholes. Any car can make it, and some were certainly slow going to get there. 

Fay & East Fay: Skirting Mowich Lake, you take off uphill toward Fay on a scramble trail after a sign indicates that the trail is unmaintained from there. This uphill part is the majority of the elevation we did for the day, but having some tree coverage and low clouds made for a pleasant uphill experience. Plus, as you gain the ridgeline, you have excellent views down to Mowich Lake. Fay was a class 2-3 scramble with no exposure, the rock was solid, and then we followed a trail just off the ridgeline before gaining East Fay. This was also a low grade scramble but had a few steps of exposure. We were unsure if there was a good way down from East Fay to Knapsack Pass, but it definitely goes! We saw two goats on the climbers trail near the East Fay ridgeline. 

Pleasant & Hessong Rock: after meeting up with the trail at Knapsack Pass, we headed down through the scree and boulder fields toward Mount Pleasant. The boulders were slow-going but stable, and snow-free! Pleasant is a walk-up, unfortunately Rainier was hidden behind the low clouds by the time we made it up, and then we followed the trail down to a saddle before ascending Hessong Rock for our 4th peak of the day. There is more boulder-hopping and eroded trail here, but it was over quickly. Back at the saddle, we assessed our time and figured we'd drop down to Spray Park instead of retracing our path as we had otherwise planned.

Spray Park: the eroded trail from the Hessong-Pleasant saddle was probably the worst of the day, but quickly dropped us through beargrass blooms to the main Spray Park trail. Spray Park was awash with beargrass and lupines, and more hikers than we had seen all day. We followed this quickly through the meadows and forest back to Mowich Lake. It was more miles but also way more efficient than the bouldery approach we had taken before. All in all a rewarding day trip!