Decided to day hike up Mt. Washington the long way. Started at the Cedar Falls TH on the Cascades to Palouse (Rattlesnake Parking lot in North Bend. Face the ledge & then turn your body 180 degrees & go that direction). Walked East around 3/4 of a mile to the Cedar Butte trail. The TH is signed but may be easy to miss if you're not paying attention. Cedar Butte moderately gains elevation for a mile or so to a very easy to miss intersection where you either take a left to summit the butte (which is clearly signed & easy to spot) or go right to head toward the Olallie trail (which is the part that is easy to miss), which is what I did. For the next mile or so, this rarely used portion of the trail is a bit overgrown with a couple of easy to navigate blow downs. It steeply heads down a ravine, meanders around for a 1/2 mile or so, then steeply heads up to connect to the Olallie. Gaiters will help in this section, which I didnt wear & was pretty wet afterwords. I avoided this section on the way back, opting to take the Olallie all the way to Cascades to Palouse in order to keep dry. Plus, it rained quite a bit after I initially went through & was certainly worse. Either way, I digress. Once connected to the Olallie Trail, I was rewarded with a trail in excellent condition, which was certainly built for bicycles. The track had endless switchbacks & wasted a ton of time ascending up the ridge (I'm not complaining). Once you gain the ridge, Its a long traverse, followed by an easy climb (more flatish switchbacks) up 500 or so feet, followed by another longish traverse to meet up with the Mt. Washington trail. As reported last week, the snow is melted. I crossed 1 small bit, which will be gone in the next couple of days. Once at the summit, I saw a party of 3 hikers, which were the only people I saw the entire day. Stats according to Garmin: 17 miles out & back, 4550 ft up/down, just shy of 7 hours total/6 hours moving.

Parking: Arrive just after 9 am. Parking lot beginning to fill. Later spoke with a couple of hikers who'd driven over to hike Mailbox but said there was no parking anywhere there. Trail didn't feel crowded or busy.

Snow: 3-4 places to take a dozen or fewer steps on snow. Melting quickly. a non-issue.

Trail: Really rocky for long stretches, so felt harder than the miles/elevation usually seem on Mt. Si - a bit like trail up Dirty Harry's Peak. 

Good! Great exercise on the ascent. Gained 3,293 ft or so in the course of 4 miles, so this is a great hike to use to get in shape for sure. Tiny little patches of snow up top, no crampons needed this time of year. Good view of Rainier and Mt Si on clear days.

The trail was quiet when we started at 6:45 am, we only met one other person at the summit although it was much busier on the way down and cars were overflowing out onto Homestead Valley Rd.

We hiked to the summit as a loop and the portion that follows the ollalie trail and is more direct is snow covered and required some scrambling. We used veggie belays many times and rejoined the Mt Washington trail for a much easier final climb to the summit, would not recommend this route currently. My friends had babies in front packs and they are tough and got it done. There were no footprints in the snow we kick stepped up and bushwhacked, coming down the other side was much easier. I highlighted the challenging snow covered portion in red. The other patches of snow were sometimes slick but not an issue some people used spikes we did not. I did posthole up to my knee once.

Great Rainier view just below the summit, we enjoyed the hike. Ample streams running for your dog companion.

It was pretty good. I went with my closest buds. a lot of us were first timers so we didn't do very well at all. however we pushed through and got to the top. kind of. we tried to take a shortcut but the snow just kept getting worse and we could no longer keep going. we should have taken the original route, but everyone makes mistakes. I would definitely recommend this hike. thank you