Comet Falls and Van Trump Park

We drove up to Mt Rainier National Park to hike to Comet Falls and Van Trump Park from the Comet Falls trailhead. We did a very short side trip to see a distant Upper Comet Falls. Overall our hike was 6.5 miles with 2,400 ft of gain. There were lots of wildflowers along our route today. View of Van Trump Creek from the bridge looking downstream and

view looking upstream.

This is a steep trail in the forest, and follows closely along Van Trump Creek, there were a few places where we could see Van Trump Creek .

The trail crosses a few scree fields, we saw this pika along one of them (zoom).

Shortly before reaching Comet Falls, the trail crosses Van Trump Creek with a view of Bloucher Falls.

View of the footbridge and Bloucher Falls from a short ways down the trail.

Soon the trail follows the West Fork of Van Trump Creek with a view of Comet Falls.

Closer to Comet Falls, we could see a rainbow near the base of the falls.

After reaching Come Falls the trail continues up through the forest in a series of switchbacks, near the top of the trail, we had a view to the south and saw Mt St Helens in the far distance.

zoom of a hazy Mt St Helens

As we took the trail to Van Trump Park and looked back, we could wee Mt Adams beyond the Tatoosh Range.

zoom of Mt Adams

Beargrass was blooming along the upper trail.

View of Mt Rainier along the Van Trump Trail

We found a nice cluster of avalanche lilies in the shade along the trail.

Near the end of the 0.3 mile "maintained" trail we reached a very steep section.

The end of the maintained trail, we continued a short distance,

and entered one of the meadows in Van Trump Park with a nice view of Mt Rainier.

We have hiked much further along this unmaintained trail a few times in previous years, but were happy with this shorter hike today. We found a spot to take our lunch break enjoying the views.

To the south we could see Mt Adams again above the Tatoosh Range.

We decided to hike an additional 0.1 mile down the the bridge over the West Fork of Van Trump Creek, along the way we saw this large avalanche lily field.

View of Mt Rainier along the way

West Fork of Van Trump Creek near the bridge crossing with a distant Upper Comet Falls and part of Mt Rainier

Monkeyflowers and phlox were some of the wildflowers growing along side the creek.

Another view of Comet Falls as we returned down the trail.

We saw butterflies and moths 

some of the wildflowers seen along the trail today: