Arrived at the Ira Spring trailhead at 8 AM, to plenty of parking available. The lot filled up later in the day but only a few cars parked on the road. Privy is in great condition.
On the road in, which starts out paved but soon turns to dirt, beware the very nasty pothole right where the pavement ends. It's not so much a pothole as a trench that stretches almost across the whole lane.
I did the clockwise loop: up Putrid Pete's Peak, across the ridge to Mt. Defiance, to the top of Defiance and back, then down past Mason Lake and back to the TH. I didn't bother scrambling east from P3 to the true summit of Web Mountain.
Although the wildflowers are past peak, there are still many in bloom. I'm sorry I'm too ignorant to list them all.
Bugs were a serious annoyance at times. Most were the little ones that irritatingly swarm without biting. A few times it got to the point where I inhaled a few. Fortunately a little breeze was enough to provide some relief.
As many have commented, the trail up to P3 is very steep, and just keeps getting more so as you go along. Altogether it's about 3000 feet, and the last 1000 happen in just 1/3 mile. But at least that last section is wide open so it's not difficult to find a route. Lower down, near the top of a series of switchbacks in the forest, I fumbled into a route that put me in the middle of a huge boulder field. And I made the same mistake when I did this last year, too! The real trail, or at least the sensible trail, goes below that boulder field. But it does go through the middle of a smaller one higher up. I highly recommend GPS sanity checks.
I've never gone down P3. I think that would be considerably worse than going up, especially on tired knees. I prefer to head across the ridge leading the Mt. Defiance. This time I avoided the pitfall of drifting too far down the southern side of the ridge line. I stayed as close as possible to the top of the ridge, and though it is rough in places, that's the best route. It helped that another hiker was in front to show me the way (hi Leanne!). And of course the views are great up there. The whole of Mt. Rainier was in our faces today, the top of Adams, Glacier Peak, Mt. Baker, and everything in between.
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