Garfield Ledges

We drove to the end of the Middle Fork Road and over the bridge to the Quartz Creek Road to the Garfield Ledges Trailhead this morning. This hike was 2 miles round trip with 650 ft of gain through a beautiful forest.

Wide angle view of the Middle Fork area from the ledge on the side of Garfiled Mountain

some of the ripe berries we found along the tral this morning:

Franklin Falls Wagon Road Loop

We drove up the Denny Creek Road to the parking area for that and Franklin Falls this morning. We hiked up the Franklin Falls Trail to Franklin Falls then returned via the Wagon Road Trail for a 2 mile loop with 350 ft overall gain. Views along the South Fork of the Snoqualmie River heading up the Franklin Falls trail

The Wagon Road Trail is a lovely forest walk where we found this very large stump

We saw a few wildflowers, some berries and fungi along the trail this morning

Noble Knob

We drove up to the Dalles Ridge Trailhead from FSR 72 and 7250 to hike to Noble Knob, 5 miles round trip with 750 ft of overall gain. We started in the clouds that turned to mostly blue skies. Lovely wildflowers along our route, with a great grouping at the trailhead.

We had limited viewsfor over a mile as we hiked through the forest on the Dalles Ridge Trail, due to the clouds, until we joined the Noble Knob Trail.

As we headed up Noble Knob, we started getting glimpses of Mt Rainier through the clouds

Some views as we headed up Dalles Ridge

We took a lunch break at this rock formation and had a great view of Mt Rainier (zoom)

Lake George below us

On our hike back through the burnt forest, we had some nice views: looking back up at Noble Knob

A cloud coveerd Mt Rainer to the south (second photo is a zoom)

To the north other Cascade Mountains and a zoom of Mount Stuart

A woodpecker and another bird that sat on trees long enough to get zoom photos

some of the wildflowers seen along the trail today: