I hiked the Silver Shadow-Tarbell Loop starting from the trailhead at Rock Creek Horse Camp, about 1.5 miles south of the loop, adding about 3 miles to the 5-mile loop. It's an easy day hike, with mostly level trail or gentle slopes, and well maintained.
The loop moves from one exposed clearcut to another, with brief sections passing through stands of mature trees. The clearcuts have been replanted and are at varying stages of regeneration. One of the longer stretches of trail through mature trees, nowhere close to old growth, has newly posted "Timber Sale Boundary" signs with fresh pink ribbons dangling below.
The clearcuts allow some ample views. To the west across a valley you can see more clearcuts sporting a few little stands of unfelled trees that look like transplanted tufts of hair on a bald man's scalp. Near the Tarbell trailhead, you can see a gloriously white Mount Saint Helens and just the tip of Mount Rainier.
The clearcuts also have enabled the vigorous growth of a wonderful array of wildflowers. Lots of oxeye daisy and yellow hawkweed, many beautiful stands of purple foxglove, and a mix of early summer blooms, both invasive and native—youth on age, inside-out flower, buttercup, fringe cup, giant red paintbrush, candy flower, oxalis in the older stands. The real treat, besides the expansive clusters of foxglove, are the shy pale Oregon iris in full bloom shaded by taller regrowing trees. Swainson's thrush were trilling almost the entire hike, and what I believe to be great horned owls were alternating their whoop-whoop-whoops to each other across a clearcut from their respective stands of older trees.
Just two mountain bikers and one other hiker encountered over the several hours of the hike. A good amble on an 80-degree day.
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