All these years in Olympia, and Herself and I had never visited Kennedy Creek during chum spawning season, so on a partly sunny Saturday, we finally made the time. As always, I tried to overpack the day: chum spawning viewing, forest hiking, visit to a waterfall, and mushroom hunting. Given our late start and the fact that they lock the road gate at 4PM, we were pleased to accomplish most of these! I'll give an overview of our hike, then some details for those can't find what they need in the WTA or AllTrails descriptions.
Overview: The AllTrails hike description is handy, as it includes the names of all of the signed trails we used. From the salmon viewing area, we took the Bayview trail up to the Wedgie Hill trail, where we paused for lunch at a viewpoint signed "View" (!). We continued on Wedgie Hill trail, bearing back toward the main road (2700) at the Wedgie Hill cutoff, and returned to road 2700 via road 2708. We hiked 2700 south to the Kennedy Creek Falls trail, then went down that track about 2/3 of the way before the trail became a flowing tributary! At that point, 3+ miles from the trailhead with 90 minutes to go before "lockdown", we decided to skip the falls and head back, taking road 2700 all the way back to the Kennedy Creek parking lot.
Details: The Gaia GPS screen-capture shows the basic route we followed, with Waypoints at our lunch viewpoint, the chanterelles spot, and the point where we turned back on our way to the Falls. We started our day with a wander down to the chum spawning areas to watch the adults compete for the best gravel beds, then headed for the trail by 11:30 AM.
The Kennedy Creek salmon viewing area parking lot, 0.5 miles up road 2700 from the Old Olympic Highway (and road gate!), is shaped like a half-circle, with an entrance and an exit. The (unsigned) Bayview Trail leaves road 2700 across from the parking lot "exit". The trail winds gently S/SE, touching road 2700 at one point before heading away through the forest. It reaches road 2705 at one point, where you turn left and pick up the trail again very quickly on your right. Up the trail a few feet is the first trail sign, which also marks the beginning of the climb through dark forest carpeted in many places with an amazing assortment of mushrooms, both tiny and huge. Be sure to look for the delicate white mushrooms growing on bare tree branches like so many tiny Christmas ornaments. The trail returns to road 2705 again, where you can continue across the road to take the (signed) Director Trail. We turned right, and a few feet up the road found the (signed) Wedgie Hill Trail. Don't ask me; all I know is that the area is popular with mountain bikers.
The climb stiffens a bit here, but that's in relative terms, since the trails we took never exceeded a 15% grade. We reached a viewpoint that was actually signed "View", and stopped there for lunch, with views of the top of Mount Rainier to the east and Totten Inlet to the north. After lunch, we continued up Wedgie Hill trail, bearing right at the point where the "Cutoff" trail goes left, as we wanted to head back to road 2700. I had promised not to slow our pace by thrashing through the woods, seeking chanterelle mushrooms, but in this next section we passed a fir tree with three beauties growing underneath, not two feet off the trail. That's not thrashing around, that's pause-pluck-move on! We reached road 2708, then turned right to take it back to 2700, so we could make better time to the Falls.
At this point, road 2700 begins a steady descent toward the Creek and Falls, which of course is all gain once you turn around. Here we encountered the first hikers we saw all day, who were returning from the Falls with muddy sneakers and a warning about "wet trail conditions". We reached the Falls trailhead on the right side of the road, "unsigned" unless you count the old sneaker left there as a marker. The trail to the Falls is about 0.6 miles, with plenty of wet spots where alternate paths have been created by previous hikers. Unfortunately, at the 0.4 mile mark, the trail disappeared under running water, side routes became harder to manage (between a hill and a ravine, so, yeah), and we hit our turn-around time. We headed back to the parking lot, using road 2700 all the way. Once we regained a little elevation, the road gave us wide, smooth, and level-to-downhill hiking all the way, getting us back to the parking lot in under an hour. Unlike many road walks, this part was fascinating, as the golden maple leaves and sporadic bursts of mushroom "plantations" along the roadside gave us much to enjoy.
We will return at some point to see the Falls, and might opt for simply taking road 2700 up and back, if fog or overcast look to threaten the wider views available from the trails. But if you want variety, beauty, and maybe some edible fungi, the track we followed is highly recommended!
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