The quintessential Cedar River Divide loop hike? Probably not, but close. If you skipped the Great Wall and the side trip to Mid-Mountain Mountain, you could include Mt Washington for a total distance of just over 15 miles and around 5,000 feet of elevation gain. I would call that the quintessential loop day hike. Maybe someday.
We hiked the loop in a clockwise direction starting at the Hall Creek trailhead and then heading up the Zig-Zag trail. This was the same as our trip to the Old Fuel Truck. At the end of the Zig-Zag trail we took the road into the Hall Creek basin rather than continuing up the ridge on NF-9021.
I was glad I had mapped a route on the GPS, there are many old logging roads in this area and none of my maps agreed on the number or location of all the roads. I'm sure some of the roads we actually saw were not on any of the maps.
A little snow in some places. A few shady areas had enough snow to slow down our pace but didn't present any problems.
A nice sunny day for a hike.
Google Maps link
A little waterfall and pool along the road into the Hall Creek basin.
Somebody loves the snow.
Blue is happy to be out and about.
Blue posses while Sly cools off in the snow.
This is a barricade at the end of the road coming up from Hall Creek to stop vehicles from entering the watershed area. I think a motorcycle is the only thing that could get this far up the road.
This mountain bike was on the Hall Creek side of the barricade and was partially covered with snow. I think the chain was missing. Did the chain brake and it wasn't worth walking the bike the many miles to a trailhead?
Snack time!
Chester Morse Lake and Mt Rainier
Crazy dog time.
Time to settle down.
pub 3/24/2016
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