The Wonderland Trail absolutely lives up to the hype! I had read people raving about it and was prepared to find it underwhelming by comparison, but it really is as good as everyone says. It's consistently steep but has consistently great pay-offs in views and in variety of terrain, flora, and fauna.
I hiked the Wonderland Trail counterclockwise from Sep 8 through 14 (7 days, 6 nights) with one friend. While there was heavy rain the night before we got our permits, we lucked out with beautiful weather - it only rained a little at night and never during the day the first six days. On our seventh and final day we had gentle rain all day and were glad to be at lower altitude on the southern side of the park. We had no mosquitos the entire time, and while the trail brings you to close views of glaciers, everything was snowfree.
If you've hiked on trails that were designed more recently, the Wonderland Trail will be noticeably steeper. The trail design is old-fashioned in some places (i.e., heading straight up slopes rather than switch backing), and as a result the trail is washed out and rocky/rooty more often than it should be. If you're used to hiking on gentler trails in the region (the PCT and other trails graded for stock, or designed to minimize erosion), expect your daily mileage to be about 2/3 what it typically is. That said, trail marking is good, the detours due to washouts were well marked, and I don't think we had to step over a single blowdown the entire trail!
We got our permit through a combination of cancellations and a walk-up. Summerland and Indian Bar are the sites that end up being bottlenecks for many itineraries, so we were keeping an eye on cancellations. We were planning to show up with gear and food and a prioritized list of itineraries, ready to take what we got. But then we got a Summerland cancellation for the night of the 8th and started building an itinerary around that. From there we were able to reserve one night at a time (Summerland, then Sunrise, then Carbon River, then South Mowich River). With 4 of 6 nights booked, we drove to Rainier on the night of the 6th and camped at the Cougar Rock campground (booked in advance and the closest to the Longmire Wilderness Information Center). We got to the Longmire WIC by 5:30 on the morning of the 7th and were first in line by ~20 minutes. When the WIC opened at 7:30 we were able to complete our itinerary with nights at Klapatche Park and Pyramid Creek.
We spent the rest of the 7th driving the very long way around to the White River Ranger Station to drop resupply buckets, to save ourselves from having a 7 day food carry on our first +5500 ft day.
We ended up hiking this route:
- Day 1: Box Canyon Trailhead to Summerland. 12.4 miles, 5500 ft ascent, 2700 ft descent
- Day 2: Summerland to Sunrise Camp. 10.5 miles, 2800 ft ascent, 2400 ft descent (we picked up a resupply at White River on this day)
- Day 3: Sunrise to Carbon River: 13.7 miles, 2900 ft ascent, 6000 ft descent
- Day 4: Carbon River to South Mowich River, 12.9 miles, 4200 ft ascent, 4600 ft descent
- Day 5: South Mowich River to Klapatche Park, 13.5 miles, 4900 ft ascent, 2200 ft descent
- Day 6: Klapatche Park to Pyramid Creek, 13.1 miles, 3600 ft ascent, 5400 ft descent
- Day 7: Pyramid Creek to Box Canyon TH, 16.9 miles, 3700 ft ascent, 4500 ft descent (with a stop for an excellent breakfast at Longmire)
I'd been backpacking all summer and have light gear, so this itinerary was just right for me. My hiking partner's knees suffered some on the downhills.
There's a lot written about the campsites online, but I think Klapatche Park was our favorite given it has stunning views both towards the mountain and to the west and comes in the middle of an otherwise less exciting few days on the west side. We also hiked the Spray Park alternate and enjoyed it, but didn't find it particularly stunning compared to the days before it. If you're going clockwise and have yet to get to the Carbon Glacier > Sunrise > Summerland > Indian Head section then Spray Park will likely be more impressive.
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