Excellent weekend backpack -- my girlfriend and I saw no other people on the trip, though we did see a black bear on the forest service road leaving Sunday.
The hike starts off with an adventure right off -- you arrive at the end of the road with no signs, park in a hastily cleared small parking lot, walk down the road a short ways, wonder how a truck and camper made it past the roadblock, climb up a rickety ladder at the point where Downey Creek washed out the approach to the Downey Creek bridge on road 26, then hike down past the old trail head to find the trail junction on the left side of the road.
The trail was wet, evidence of much trail work abounded. This early season hike is a great way to see what our trail workers do for us all. A number of sections are slightly overgrown, only a nuisance if the vegetation is wet. The blow downs and muddy sections of trail abound but many are being addressed with trail work in progress. Don't attempt without gaiters and good waterproof boots. You'll want poles or a hiking stick and a good sense of balance for many of the stream crossings, but only the Bachelor Creek crossing is dangerous.
With a serious torrent barreling down Bachelor Creek, crossing it at the very end of the hike is extremely scary right now. Wading is a frightful proposition, at least knee deep in very fast water. The only log across Bachelor Creek is a good 4 feet above stream level, and the prospect of falling off into 2-3 feet of rushing mountain stream is a bit much (won't be repeating). Fortunately for the return trip we discovered that scooching over the log on our butt feels much safer. In any case, doing this crossing made all the other crossings seem a cake walk on the return.
There are better camp sites across Bachelor Creek, but there is a usable one before the crossing. The ""100 Hikes in Washington's Glacier Peak Region"" book talks about a ""Sixmile Camp"" across Downey Creek at the end of this trail, but the forest service trailhead doesn't mention it, and there is no sensible way we saw to cross Downey Creek, at least at this time of year, so ""Sixmile Camp"" remains a mystery.
There is an unmaintained trail straight up Bachelor Creek. We only went up far enough to rule out an easy or obvious place to cross. There were none -- the creek seems to only get more imposing as the trail climbs.
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