(This is a trip report for casual hikers — if you are planning to circumnavigate Glacier Peak and want to know about the upper reaches of Indian Creek, this report won’t be of great use!). The road to the trailhead is the usual bumpy experience; watch for potholes and you should be fine in any reasonable car. This was our first excursion up to Indian Creek after fire closures last year and we were pleased to see that the first 2.5 miles of trail to Indian Creek are in good shape, with brush here and there and about 16 downed logs that are easy to get over. First stream crossing at 0.5 miles is marginal for hikers with marginal balance skills. The crossing there is on log debris thrown in place by hikers. Later in the year when the water is lower it should be an easy rock-hopping crossing. Other streams were dry or low flow and boggy spots were mostly dried out.
The replacement bridge over Indian Creek has been mostly finished and is open for hikers. I say mostly finished because the hand railing is inexplicably missing for the final 7 feet or so. The balance challenged and acrophobe may want to take that into account if planning a hike beyond the crossing.
That is where we turned around. We did dink around trying to find the beach just downstream of Indian Creek on the White River (it’s lovely, with great views and hand samples of every bit of geology that is upstream), but we missed it the first time and decided we had had enough bushwhacking and canceled our second attempt.
All in all a great walk in the forest with seasonally appropriate wildflowers. And yes, the mosquitoes were annoying at times, but a little breeze and a little DEET removed the annoyance.
Comments