Talapus and Olallie Lakes, Island Lake - Rainbow Lake & Pratt Mountain — Sunday, Jun. 8, 2025

I was looking at a heat map of my trips on the I-90 corridor and realized that I'd never been to Talapus or Olallie. Wanting to make my day a little more interesting, I noticed a bouldered valley above Talapus affording access to Island Lake. I couldn't find much in the way of info about this route, but decided to give it a shot.

The trailhead parking lot was beyond full at 8:10 am on this sunny Sunday. I had to park 0.2 mile from the parking lot. A few people on the trail to Talapus, but once I headed around the west side of the lake I only saw a single person until I got back to Olallie miles later.

I passed 2 large and 2 small campsites on the west side of Talapus that were all empty which was a little surprising to me on a such a sunny weekend.

The trail on the west side of Talapus stays close to the lake and tunnels through some alder until it pops out on a boulder field. From here I was able to stay on boulders with a quick pop into forest all the way to the base of the waterfall outflow of Island lake. Quite pleasant travel if you don't mind boulder hopping.

From here I decided to take a stab up the lookers left side of the waterfall. I climbed a mossy/rocky rib that was looser than I'd like. It involved a bit of stemming/hugging/hanging on to trees as I made upward progress. I made it work, but if I were to return I'd cross the stream to the east side under the waterfall and ascend boulders further right to skirt around the headwall.

I've never seen so much pollen covering everything in the cascades as I did on this trip. Every lake had a layer of pollen on it, and every branch I touched would result in a puff of pollen. The pollen even made it's way through my shoes and socks, in between my toes. Guess we need some rain.

Island had at least one melted out campsite, but also a decent amount of snow & wet ponds around it. The Island connector trail and the flats of the trail near Rainbow still had lots of snow, but nothing I felt uncomfortable on with just my trail runners.

I decided to skip Rainbow, and headed east on the trail & towards Pratt. Shortly thereafter I headed north off the trail and on to another boulder field below Pratt's summit. Mostly easy travel with a bit of brush to work through along the ridge to the summit proper.

From here I knew that people use the SE ridge to access Pratt, and thought there would be at least a faint trail to follow. WRONG. After the boulders petered out I made a crucial mistake of heading too far north off the ridge. I ended up in near vertical forest with super slipper dirt/pine needles under foot with cliffs interspersed. Neither pleasant nor fast travel from here. I got low enough to skirt around the worst of the cliffs and regained the ridge. I stayed on the ridge proper from here. There was a semblance of a trail at points, but also a lot of brush. Eventually the south side of the ridge mellowed out and I made a beeline for the trail proper.

Stoked to be back on the trail, I ran down to Olallie for a quick dip and continue on past Talapus and back to the car.

My watch claimed ~10 miles and 3.6K of vert in 5h 12m. I think it was probably closer to 3k all told but I did do some side wandering along the way (exploring Talapus & Island).