04/09/26
John was free for a mid-week hike. It would be sunny and in the mid 60s. That would be one of the warmest days this year. We narrowed our choices to another hike up Tiger with great summit views or a hike at lower elevations on Cougar with a better chance of seeing wildflowers. We chose wildflowers. I suggested a loop trip on the south side of Cougar where I generally see wildflowers earlier. We met at Red Town a little before 2:00 pm. That would give us plenty of time for a long hike with lots of photo stops. It was 65F at the start. John started with shorts and short sleeves. I reached that state before we had hiked far. It was the warmest start of a hike I can recall for many months. We packed up and headed out at 1:57 pm. The lot was mostly full but the north end had lots of paces open. The start of the Wildside Trail has a lot of bleeding hearts in season. We were a bit early. We saw one or two small purple bumps that would soon be flowers. That was disappointing. We crossed Coal Creek and reached the Road at the Ford Slope. The continuation of the Wildside Trail was blocked with red tape. The beaver dam nearby had the boardwalks underwater in December and some puddles on dirt a few months ago. Now the route is dry.
The next section of trail is where I often see my first blooming trillium of the year. There were a bunch of small patches in bloom. They were my first sightings of the year. In addition, we saw some salmonberries and spring beauties in bloom too. These flowers were seen on much of our route. We turned off on the Marshall Hill Trail heading for De Leo Wall. Next, we started seeing yellow violets and Oregon grape. The violets were especially profuse on our route. I have been seeing them for several weeks. What we were not seeing were many people. At the next junction we took the high route up Marshall Hill instead of the lower trail to De Leo Wall. Both routes go to De Leo Wall. Since this route would have below average elevation gain. we took a route that would add some more. I had been over Marshall Hill a few times but had not been down the steep trail to De Leo Wall. This time we took it. Near the top, we found logs across the trail. On our last trip we each brought saws. I could not recall if I took it out of me pack. I stopped to check and there it was. I was carrying the extra weight so we decided to take the time to use it. A couple cuts and the the log was gone. I think this was where we manhandled another log off the trail. We ended up cutting or moving several logs off trails.
The trail does drop very steeply before a series of gentler switchbacks took us down to De Leo Wall. That is the only place I find chocolate lilies close to Seattle. Last year half the lily plants had flowers snipped off. I did not know if it was a person or an animal that did it. This year was the same. One patch had 5 or 6 flowering plants. Another patch had only bare cut stalks above the leaves. That was disappointing though we did see chocolate lilies in bloom. With photo stops and trail maintenance we were not covering much ground. We left De Leo Wall at 3:11 pm. We took 1:14 to hike 2.3 miles. That works out to less than 2 mph. We hiked out the towards the Indian Trail. The route had more of the same flowers. we saw lots of trillium, yellow violets, and spring beauty. I had planned to go onto Far Country Lookout and take the Shy Bear Trail up to Wilderness Peak. We modified the route by taking the Wildside Trail over to The Meadow. That is where we see blooming fawn lilies. Based on what we had seen so far, we thought we were likely to early. It was still worth taking a look. We reached The Meadow to find far fewer fawn lily leaves than expected and no flowers. Close inspection showed one flower pod that was yellow and will likely bloom within a week but nothing else. We did not see any flowers in bloom there.
We took the Indian Trail out to the Far Country Lookout trail junction. The trail is nearly parallel to the Wildside we had just hiked. Our detour to and from the meadow added about a mile to our trip. Other than some shelf fungus and some nicely lit up hanging moss, there was not much to see. We did trail a guy with a big pack who was trailing for bigger mountains than Cougar. Though our packs weighed a fraction of his, it took us until the trail steepened to catch him. We stopped for just a moment for a few photos from the Lookout then went over the top and dropped down on the Shy Bear Trail. We crossed the small creek and it was back to uphill. There was one neat clump of fungus on a tree but not much more on the way to the Deceiver Trail junction. We stayed straight on the Shy Bear Trail and soon reached the swamp/marsh. A constantly growing series of boardwalks cross the swamp. This is a prime spot to see skunk cabbage in the spring. We saw a good crop of bright yellow spathes on the skunk cabbage. It was time for more photos. I had seen on yellow skunk cabbage at Ruth's Cove this year but this was a good crop.
Most of our route was in thick forest but at the swamp the sun shone down on us. It was pleasantly warm. The trail climbs out of the swamp and then drops down to another one. This can be a very good spot to see skunk cabbage. This time there were only a few blooming not hundreds. It seems that we were too early. We saw more salmonberry and trillium in bloom. The trail climbs again to a junction with Fred's Railroad. This section had some actual small bleeding heart flowers. We stayed right on the Shy Bear Trail at the junction. On our descent we would come within a couple minute hike from this point. The trail had ups and downs with twists and turns before reaching Shy Bear Pass. I have seen some pretty good flower displays on the way to the top of Wilderness Peak. We were too early. No flowers blooming up high. We did see one good mushroom display. We reached the summit of Wilderness Peak at 5:21 pm. At 1595', it was the highest point on our trip. It was time for a food and water break. We were now at about the 7 mile mark. We were 3:24 along with about 2:30 until sunset.
We took a different route down on an old trail back to the East Fork Trail. It was in excellent condition with no logs down. On the East Fork Trail we saw a big patch of bleeding heart leaves and a couple flowers in bloom. We almost walked right on by as they were hard to see. I was really hoping to see fully blooming ones and they were much better than the few small flowers we saw earlier. That was not a disappointment. At the next junction we went left on Fred's Railroad. As mentioned, a short way from the Shy Bear junction we turned right and descended the Quarry Trail. We zipped on down and after a short climb where the current trail leaves the long closed original Quarry Trail we reached the junction to a short trail that drops to Coal Creek Falls. Though we had not had much recent rail, the creeks we saw all had running water so we decided to take a look at the falls. We arrive at the falls to see a moderate flow cascading down. It was not great but with the extra elevation gain and loss. After a few photos we retraced out steps back to the Quarry Trail. We did see some other hikers on the falls trail. We had not seen anyone since near Far Country Lookout.
The Quarry Trail descends with moderately graded switchbacks to the Indian Trail. Our big loop was completed. We turned right to The Meadow then left on the trail back to the car. At the next junction it became the Wildside Trail. We arrived back at the cars at 6:57 pm. I was home well before sunset. It looks like headlamp hikes are down until next fall. This turned out to be a very nice hike. It was not hot though I was finally sweating going uphill. It was a warm winter but a cool spring. Even 65F felt warm this day. For the day we hiked about 10 miles with 1500' of elevation gain. Not a lot of gain but 10 miles is a good leg stretcher. We did not see the big patches of many wildflowers that should be here in a couple more weeks. We did see a good display of small bunches of expected early spring flowers. It is always a treat to see chocolate lilies. For a sunny Thursday we saw fewer people than I expected. It looks like wildflower season is now underway. It's one of my favorite times to be hiking.
 A Sunny Afternoon |
 Salmonberry Flower |
 Spring Beauties |
 First Trillium |
 A Yellow Violet |
 Marshall Hill Trail |
 John & Yellow Violets |
 Two Chocolate Lilies |
 Another Chocolate Lily |
 Dark Chocolate Lily |
 De Leo Wall View |
 Three Yellow Violets |
 Another Spring Beauty |
 Fawn Lily Bud |
 Lit Up Moss |
 Far Country Lookout |
 Tree Fungus |
 First Skunk Cabbage |
 John & Skunk Cabbage |
 Nice Skunk Cabbage |
 Long Boardwalk |
 Double Skunk Cabbage |
 Not Proportioned John |
 Nice Composition |
 Triple Trillium |
 Perfect Trillium |
 Second Swamp |
 Mushrooms |
 Wilderness Peak Trail |
 John On WP Summit |
 Mossy Trail |
 East Fork Trail |
 First Bleeding Hear |
 More Bleeding Hearts |
 Coal Creek Falls |
 Wildside Trail |
 Almost Done |
Trips - 2026
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