We inadvertently did a whopper of a loop hike today, starting from Camp Sheppard with the intention of doing Little Ranger Peak. Here's what happened . . .
First, parking: the directions for where to park were quite fuzzy, so we decided to park at the Camp Sheppard lot. Great! we thought, here's a nice, civilized trailhead. Well, yeah . . . except, we ended up hiking about 2.5 miles just to get to the Little Ranger Peak trail. But that was fine; the trail was mellow, and though it paralleled 410, it was pleasant (we also accidentally did a mini-loop even on that trail, though!). For future reference, the parking area for Little Ranger Peak is just short of the Buck Creek Camp sign on 410.
Once on the actual trail we were looking for, we hiked 2.8 miles to the Peak (a steady but well-grade ascent), where we had a snack, enjoyed the pretty view, and decided to forge onwards, because--well, heck, it was only 11:30 a.m.! We thought we'd head towards Dalles Ridge, signs for which were right there at the junction.
On the way to the ridge, which was 3 miles from Little Ranger Peak, we passed the intersection for Palisades, and made a mental note: we could take a "shortcut" (HA!) back to Camp Sheppard later on, via Palisades. We headed on up to Dalles Ridge, a 3-mile hike through a really interesting and eerily beautiful burn site (the Norse Peak fire from a few years ago). After reaching the ridge, we hiked along it looking for a good lunch spot. We learned from some mountain bikers that we were on the way to Noble Knob, so after lunch we headed towards The Knob for a short distance till the trail began heading uphill again. At this point, we'd already gone about 10 miles so decided to turn around.
We headed back down and did, indeed, take the Palisades trail back to Camp Sheppard and our car. Now, Palisades is beautiful. It hugs the mountainside and has numerous viewpoints looking out across the White River valley to Mount Rainier and other mountaintops all around. The views of Rainier are gorgeous, and the cliffs that you are hiking along are dramatic.Wildflowers abound, including paintbrush and purple penstemon. BUT--it is a long and rigorous 8+ miles back down to Camp Sheppard. At one point, we thought we were had misread our map and that we were in for a 25-mile hike total. Luckily, another group of mountain bikers were able to reassure us that we were on the right track--only hiking 20 miles. The Palisades portion was beautiful, but I am glad we were hiking down rather than up--especially for the last couple of miles, which took us past Dalles Falls. Palisades is very steep!
Total mileage for today was over 20 miles. Highlights: beautiful hike all the way, especially along Dalles Ridge and Palisades, both of which had terrific views to Rainier. Also--very nice mountain bikers today! We saw about a dozen guys on bikes and all were super nice, courteous and helpful! Thank you!
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