Mount Walker Spring Hike Olympic National Forest

With the forecast of partly cloudy, wanted to revisit Mount Walker to see the views.

 We hiked the 2 mile, 2000 ft elevation gain trail in 70 minutes!

From the Nort View Point, we could see the Olympic Mountains to the Northwest

 and to the Northeast, Quilcene, across Hood Canal and Puget Sound to Mt Baker.

From the South viewpoint, we cold see across the Kitsap Peninsula 

to the Seattle Skyline and to Mt Rainier

On the hike back down the trail we saw this squirrel 

and these Calypso Orchids,
also called Fairy Slippers.

Lower Dungeness River Hike in Washington

Nice low altitude conditioning hike to take in Spring time in the Olympic National Forest

We hiked about 12.6 miles round trip with 2000 ft elevation gain. 

he trail had some nice wooden bridges and walkways, but they were more slippery than the slightly muddy trail. There were many small creeks and waterfalls along the trail.

in the first two miles we climbed up 1000 ft, the clouds parted and we saw Iron Mtn in the distance

 we hiked down about 500 ft to the Dungeness River and followed the river to the upper Dungeness River trail head with more ups and downs, along this beautiful river

 And there were some early wildflowers in bloom.

 

Snowshoe to Carter Falls at Mt Rainier

 We went about 6.5 miles round trip with 900 ft elevation gain. The trail out to Carter Falls starts at Longmire on Mt Rainier and goes along a small portion of the Wonderland trail. 

The trail parallels the road to Paradise until you reach Cougar Campground.

A log bridge takes you across the Nisqually River. 

The log was very icy, we removed our snowshoes and put on Yak trax  to cross.

The trail to Carter Falls is to the right, then goes to left behind the river bank.

 The trail continues up along the Paradise River.

 About 3.3 miles we reached the lookout over Carter Falls.

 We tried to find the trail to Madcap Falls, only 0.2 miles further on, but there were no tracks to follow.

We did find the site of where there was an old dam before we turned back.