Twin Firs Bushwhack
We entered Mount Rainier National Park about 2:15 pm. Our first stop was the Twin Firs trail. We made the mistake of attempting a counterclockwise loop and taking a trail to the right, which had a large tree fallen across it, and we climbed over the tree and soon ran out of trail! Apparently this is not the main trail. We bushwhacked our way in a loop back to the trailhead. Our loop was 0.4 miles, but we climbed over blowdowns and made our way through brush until we got back to trail. When we got back, we determined where we should have gone (straight or to the left), but we had another, longer hike in mind and resolved to finish this one later. Because of the ambiguous trailhead, I marked this hike "difficult to navigate."
Along the way, we marveled at old growth (OG), giant blowdowns, moss, seedlings, and groundcover. The flora consists of Douglas fir, western hemlock, red cedar, red huckleberry, deer fern, sword fern, and Cascade Oregon-grape. The trail, where we were on it, is in relatively good condition.
We have to give a shout-out to the ladies at the Copper Creek Inn in Ashford. We had initially planned a trip to Glacier View on FR-59, but we had a flat tire on the FR, and we changed our tire at the Inn's parking area. We had lunch there, and the ladies at the Inn brought us an air compressor to attempt inflation of our spare tire. We had great food and service above and beyond the call of duty.
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