This hike is extremely steep and fairly technical. Most of the other hikers I encountered had turned around at the rock scramble section below the famous Infinity Tarn.
I did a late-in-the-day dayhike up to the Infinity Tarn. Mindful of several trail reports about car break ins at the trailhead, I deliberately did this trail on a Saturday so there would be more people around. Folks were parked from the Barclay Lake lot all the way down to the start of the Gunn trail, so I just parked at Gunn.
This hike has clearly become popular. I shared the trail with around 20 other people total, and it's been hiked enough that the path is very clear with little route finding. That said, it would be wise to have GPS or a downloaded trail map. I used this for the creek crossing and one part of the upper rock scramble.
I've trained all summer on steep hikes and scrambles, but I feel like this was steeper than all of them: steeper than Putrid Pete's Peak, Snoqualmie Mountain, Kaleetan - and quite a bit steeper than Mailbox. The steepest part is the initial forest scramble for the first mile, most of which is loose dirt.
Despite reading all the reports, both here and on other sites, I screwed up the entry to the waterfall gully. Most of the photos online show it from the other side. Coming up to it in real life, the high route, the most difficult, looks like the main trail. The lower route is hidden behind a boulder. My 4th pic here is that split, note the brown boulder on the right with a cairn on top (the cairn had been tipped over which is why I didn't see it. Another hiker rebuilt it on our way back down). Upper route is a class 3 scramble, lower is class 2 and probably the better route.
I found the part after the forest scramble and waterfall crossing to be relatively straightforward, but there are several places with rock scrambles. I didn't feel like any of it was above a class 2, but I kept running into folks who'd turned around there.
I had originally planned on hiking just to Tailgunner given my late start, but once I was sitting at the Infinity Tarn I was so content with where I was that I didn't bother doing anything else. There are definitely a lot of fun places to explore here though.
Sadly, I could also see the clouds of smoke from the Labor Mountain Fire. The view was a bit hazy.
Coming down poles were critical. Going back through the waterfall gully I was fortunate to follow someone who had a better grasp of the route.
The hike to the tarn came in at 5 miles roundtrip, about 3200' of elevation.
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