Suiattle River Trail — Tuesday, Jul. 27, 1999

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

I decided to give the snow a break and let it melt a little, so this week I headed north of Glacier Peak to do some distance up the Suiattle River valley. Note: highway 530 east of Arlington is being resurfaced, so expect delays if heading out toward Darrington during the week. After leaving late at 8:30am, busy traffic, and road construction heading toward Darrington, we still made the trailhead at the end of FS #26 in three hours at 11:30am. The Suiattle River was boiling at a milky froth! The sound would accompany the entire day – always a fun hike when one can find this. The trail is as smooth, level, and fast hiking as almost any trail in existence. Work to log the trail out has been completed to the PCT about 12 miles in. There are many places to cross water over the trail from the numerous creeks that are coming off the northern ridge to the valley, and many of these are in the form of delightful waterfalls nearly on top of the trail! About four miles up the trail, I managed to pull a dumb maneuver and slip trying to get fancy crossing a creek where it was 8’ wide instead of just walking the 25’ wide section of trail that was flowing water from the creek. PLOP! Faster than I can recall what happened, my boots were filled with water. I was in a semi-sitting position in the creek. At that point it was VERY easy to just walk across the creek not caring if I got wet, as I was as wet as I could ever get if I just walked through! Of course, the hike back to the trailhead I just went straight through, finding plenty of underwater rocks to keep my boot tops above water. Duh… Two of the waterfalls had me setting up the tripod for shooting photographs, and I found the Canyon Creek crossing to be an excellent 3:00pm lunch stop. Canyon creek, about seven miles in, was a spectacular mix of waterfalls and roaring creek bed to photograph, and I spent the next hour here shooting well over a roll of images. Stunning! It was also about 20 degrees colder here than around the bend on this 80+ degree day, which was refreshing. The new bridge over Canyon Creek is very nice as well – it was replaced last summer. A fast hike back out took me back to the intersection with the Milk Creek Trail. I decided to head up there a ways to check things out and enjoy the spectacular bridge crossing over the Suiattle River. What a sight that was with the river running so madly! Started out for civilization around 7:10pm and was eating excellent Mexican food in Arlington by 8:30pm, followed by a drowsy drive home to finish off a very good day. About 14.5 miles in all, never got above 2660’ elevation all day, and the bugs were virtually non-existent! Will be heading back in a few more weeks to go up Milk Creek Trail to the PCT and beyond.