Marmot Pass via Upper Dungeness River Trail — Thursday, May. 1, 2025

We were unable to get to Boulder Shelter. There are 12 inches and more of soft snow on the trail about 0.7 miles north of Boulder shelter at 4500 ft. Before that there was one drainage with a snow bridge which is becoming thin. What is more concerning are 2 large and 2-3 smaller slide areas. The trial is just barely hanging on to the edge in one of the areas. We saw some cut and barked logs stacked near one of the slides. I hope some shoring up is possible. If the current route is lost, the effort/money/time to re-route is difficult to imagine. The slides start about half way between Handy and Boulder.

I must add that except for the snow and slide areas, the rest of the trail is gorgeous! Mature forest with little underbrush, beautifully graded trail, very few trees down, two attractive and sturdy log bridges over the river, and easy creek crossings.

The mature trees and the moss covered forest floor never got old. The Dungeness river is blue in the sunlight. There are an impressive number of rhododendrons between Camp Handy and 4000ft. Some had plump flower buds, but still a month from bloom.

We camped at Camp Handy. The only disturbance was a large helicopter flying very low up the valley at dusk.