Mount Pilchuck State Park Trail

I finished up business as quickly as I could and headed out of the office about 11:30 AM. It took about 40 minutes to reach the trailhead. The last time I tried this, I was turned back by the amount of snow on the road and that was about 3 weeks ago. Instead, I had done my first pass at the Heather Lake trail that is just about 5 miles before the Pilchuck starts. Only when we were at the parking area did I see snow and that was right next to the sign welcoming you to the park.

Here you can see Bogie wasting no time in enjoying the snow he sees.

The start of the trail isn’t marked that well but it was the only real opening we could see. With the snow melting, it looked more like a small waterway but we explored that direction. Almost immediately, we found the trail sign in station and more snow. So I had my doubts about how long I was going to spend on the trail. Hiking in snow isn’t my favorite form of hiking but later found the snow was heavy in spots and non existent in other spots. The hike if very pretty and we were both enjoying it quite a bit. There is only one stream that I came across and that was early and gushing pretty well. There was snow pack on both side and that made crossing the stream a little challenging but nothing to worry about.






Then the trail goes upward until you hit a bolder field. That was interesting and about the place were a family caught up with us. We let them pass because I was in no hurry and enjoying many stops to enjoy the view.



After that, we started hitting nothing but snow and the terrain was sloping quite a bit. My shoes were not handling it that well, the sky was beginning to cloud over quite a bit and I felt good about my explorations of the trail thus far (for an initial visit). So we headed back down the trail and decided to try it again in a couple weeks and see how the snow melt is coming along. That will be the end of July, so hopefully I wont have to compete for parking with too many families on stayvactions.

Here are some parking lot photos after our return.