Got outside for National Trails Day with WTA on the Little Ranger Peak trail. We parked at the Skookum Flats trail head across the street and walked over to catch the trail. Once you cross highway 410, go up the narrow path to meet the actual trail. From here we headed to the right and headed up the trail.

The three groups of us worked on a short section of trail. Two groups placed crib walls to help reinforce two different switch backs, while another group helped reinforce the trail where people have cut switchbacks.

The group I was working with used all rocks for our crib wall and helped bring the trail back to the proper width.

Not many people on the trail today, and there are a few wildflowers blooming. There is once section of trail after the first switch back after getting on the main trail with YEW trees! So awesome to see a cluster of them.

Come out an join us on the trails sometime www.wta.org/volunteer

Until then Happy Trails

This is a great early season snow free hike just east of Mt Rainier.  The unmarked trailhead is south of Camp Sheppard and about 100 feet north of FS 7160.  

The entire trail goes through very nice old growth Douglas Fir forest.  The first couple miles are in ear shot of Little Ranger Creek.  This area is in the rain shadow of Mt Rainier so even though the trees are very old they don't achieve gargantuan proportions like they do in wetter environments.  Most of the trees are in the 2-3 foot diameter range.  I measured the largest one at 16ft 8in in circumference (5.3 ft diameter).  I counted the rings on one cut windfall at about 4000 feet and it was 700 years old! That tree started growing 200 years before Columbus set sail for America. Kind of boggles the mind.

The Little Ranger Viewpoint at about 3 miles and 1300 feet elevation makes for a perfect turn around point.  To get the best view you have to scramble over an exposed ridge but it was not at all difficult.  

We continued on for about another 1.5 miles to get a glimpse of the aftermath of the Norse peak fire from last year.  We saw several areas where the understory was burnt to a crisp but the trees were still alive. You can see higher up on the ridge where the forest was completely killed by the fire. About this point there were lots of downfall and the trail was sloughing in places so we turned around.  This additional mileage was good exercise but not as scenic as the trail up to the viewpoint.  

The trail surface and incline was perfect up to the viewpoint and about 1 mile beyond. All the windfall had been removed.  I cleaned up the few branches and loose rocks on the trail. The trail is also used by mountain bikes. The only damage that the mountain bikes have caused is rutting of the tight switchbacks.  Overall the trail holds up well to mountain bike use.

RT 8.7 mi and 2100 feet elevation gain (to viewpoint 6mi and 1300 ft). We only saw one mountain biker and no hikers.

I'm not going to give a full recap of the Palisades hike, but just contribute some information other recent reports seem to be lacking. I also tagged Little Ranger Peak, both because these two hikes share so much of the Ranger Creek trail and because there is one paragraph below attempting to describe how to find - or not find - Little Ranger Peak.

As other recent trip reports have noted, this trail is not actually closed and WTA should probably update its warning.

The trailhead is easy to find if you follow WTA's directions, but if you are using their map/coordinates, please note that they are wrong. Here are the correct numbers: 47.049, -121.57

We did not see any of the calypso orchids reputed to bloom near Dalles Creek falls this time of year, but also did not look very carefully. Keep your eyes open. 

Recent trip reports noted that they sunk into soft, rootless soil affected by recent wildfire. This was only a mild problem for us, and we never came close to anything like postholing in dirt, as one trip report described. The fire does, however, pose a few obstacles. First, there are - as noted in a sign at the trailhead - a lot of trees down across the path, and others that might fall soon. Second, the trail is somewhat hard to follow between the final Palisades viewpoint and the intersection with the Ranger Creek Trail 1197. If you can't find it, just keep close to the ridgeline and you should be fine.

The mileage supplied by WTA for the last few miles of this hike (beginning with "At the junction with Trail 1199, turn right and hike about 3.3 miles along the valley bottom.") does not match the mileage posted on signs along the actual trail. I would venture that the mileage posted on those signs is more accurate, but I did not measure. The overall length, however, does seem to be mostly correct, so just making a note of this here in case you, too, become mildly confused when reality does not match what you read in the trip reports.

The rest of this trip report is for anyone interested in finding Little Ranger Peak from the intersection of Ranger Creek Trail 1197 and Palisades. Feel free to skip it if you are just interested in the Palisades: We had hoped to climb Little Ranger Peak before completing the loop, and the hike description made it seem like this would be easy to do from the intersection with Ranger Creek Trail 1197 (All it says is "Here you can access Little Ranger Peak and the Ranger Creek Shelter beyond"). We followed the obvious trail from this intersection (straight ahead, instead of turning right to head down the Ranger Creek Trail 1197), but just wound up hiking about 1.3 miles up the Ranger Creek Trail 1197 until we encountered a sign notifying us Little Ranger Peak 'View' was three miles back the way we came. We took this to mean we had gone the wrong way, missed the peak entirely, and turned around. Near as I can tell by from comparing GPS coordinates from pictures on my phone with GPS tracks others have posted online (e.g. https://www.summitpost.org/little-ranger-peak/687732), here's what happened: If you're doing this entire hike as a loop, you'll hit Little Ranger Peak just by walking along the Palisades trail and heading for 1197, so by the time we reached the intersection we had already been there. None of the hike descriptions we'd seen made this clear, so we reached the intersection and only then started looking for a way up to Little Ranger Peak even though I believe we'd already made it. Later, when we saw the sign pointing us back towards Little Ranger Peak 'View' and believed that this location was our intended destination, we were making a mistake I've now identified in numerous trip reports for the WTA 'Little Ranger Peak' hike as well as elsewhere (e.g. http://www.hikingwithmybrother.com/little-ranger-peak.html): conflating Little Ranger Peak with Little Ranger Peak 'View'. The distance and mileage (12 RT) posted on WTA for the Little Ranger Peak hike seems to be correct, though several trip reports describe reaching the summit at around 3 miles into the hike, rather than six. That's because they hit the View and turned around there. Were I WTA, I might consider splitting what is now "Little Ranger Peak" into two hikes - one 6 RT and another 12 RT from that trailhead. I could be entirely wrong here, and we in fact never made it to Little Ranger Peak ourselves - either way, it's worth keeping in mind the distinction between Little Ranger Peak and Little Ranger Peak 'View', because unless you're paying very close attention to trip reports, you might find yourself very confused like we were. Also, the shelter appears to have been unsurprisingly reduced to a heap of metal, though I could have just looked in the wrong place. Anyway, please feel free to correct me if any of this is wrong. I suspect there was once better signage before the fire.

I did a short hike from 410 up Ranger Creek Trail just north of the Skookum Falls Trailhead. I was the only one on the trail on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. My goal was the peak and the trail was easy to follow and clear. The only intersection was less than half a mile from the start where the White River trail splits and you follow the sign for Ranger Creek Trail, the Palisades Trail and Dalles Ridge. It is about 1200 feet of gain to the top. It is an easy and well graded path. The peak is at about 3 miles from the start, when you come out at the ridge there is a sign pointing to the peak view. An easy scramble out on the rocks at the point leads to a beautiful view of the nearby peaks and even a glimpse of the snowy top of Rainier. I can’t wait to do the full loop with Palisades Trail later this year but no time today so I returned the way I came, a lovely jog down with the sounds of the creek to keep me company.

Update, to see the extent of the burn, and the soil burn, use link below, 

http://centralwashingtonfirerecovery.info/2017/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Norse-Peak-Soil-Burn-Severity-Map-ps-1.pdf

I started at Dalles Creek.

There's a tiny bit of snow at Snoquera Creek. From mile 5.5-5.8 (6.0 is the last overlook from the palisades) there were a few snow crossings, none of these were too challenging or scary (I am a 3.5 out of 10 when it comes to snow crossing skill and daring).

After 6.0 the trail turns east, goes north of Little Ranger Peak into the section built by the Boy Scouts.

At 6.2 it enters the area that is completely burnt. The trees here were burnt from the bottom, the tops, with their mass, are still intact. The trees were about the only flora up there, without their roots, the ground is very soft, the elk are post-holing 2 feet down. I went .3 of a mile, only 40% of the trail is left in that area. The ground is eroding away and this up on a ridge!   A trail runner who completed the loop caught up with me on the way down, he said that the conditions were the same all the way from where I was to a mile+ down the Ranger Creek Trail, for a total of 3 miles he thought.  He did not have fun in burnt areas.

I think the forest service warning is spot on. You probably won't have a tree fall on you (unless you try to push one over), but you could break an ankle postholing into the dirt. 

I'm curious about what happens on this ridge and in the other adjacent burnt areas, I am guessing that this ridge will wash away to the volcanic rock below. I love this network of trails, it is sad to see them diminished.

I was looking for an open passage to Noble Knob (it won't be long until it's in bloom), I'll keep you posted..