You’re still boulder-hopping - be careful with your poles going in the deep spaces between the rocks, I snapped one once - but you aren’t really navigating at all. It is, as the kids say, “extra.” It tumbles out, and up, and looks impossible until you see a faint dusting of tan over the gray rocks and realize there’s a trail of sorts, dirt tracked over a subtle “trail” up the mountain. Up until then, you’ve been in a forest so thick you can’t tell how high up you actually are, and have been seeing just brown and green if it’s summer or white if it’s winter, but now, from a couple lazy switchbacks along its west upper flank, you see blue sky and more shades of green, or gold and red in the fall, and if you’re an early bird, the oranges and pinks of sunrise.Īnd then, emerging as if from a doorway, or better yet, walking from the wardrobe into Narnia, at about 3,860 feet, you come face to face with a sprawling, steep, vast boulder field. This part of the trail offers your first views west across Snoqualmie Valley to the neighboring peaks and south to Mount Rainier. The two trails intersect just over a half mile from the summit, in that transitory area between treeline and talus. Though only a half mile, this section takes most regulars 20-30 minutes, and I’ve seen newer hikers take an hour for just that part alone. You’ll cross a bridge early on but there aren’t many more landmarks until you meet up with the Old Trail. They get the cardio and quad benefits of the Old Trail with a comparatively low-impact descent for a 7 mile loop.įrom the start, the trail is shaded and manicured, wide and level and tidy like a sidewalk, and so so green. Incidentally, that’s a very common way to do it, for people who have bad knees, bad balance, or just don’t like going down steep hills: up Old and down New. I became a loyal OT girl, making the exception to take the boyfriend up and down New for sunset (per his request), and running down it with the kid after summiting via the Old. I was more than ready for it, but my confidence is often the kind where I’m saying how I can’t do something as I’m doing it - then I got to talking with someone at the summit who said that if I was ok with the part above treeline, I could do Old Trail easily, so I decided to trust their opinion and take Old down, and it was love at first hike. My first time, I took the New Trail up because I didn’t trust my own ability or stamina or just overall fitness and agility to take the Old. After getting used to the Old Trail, the New is just mind-bogglingly never-ending and quite frankly a bit boring. Airplane your phone, as you won’t have service till the top, get a little snack or water in, take a photo of the map, maybe de-layer, and you’re off for four somewhat monotonous yet peaceful miles.Ĭonfession: I’ve only hiked the New Trail a total of two times. This is a good place to “pull over” as the trailhead widens to form a little foyer of sorts before ducking into the woods. On your left is a nice new-looking trailhead sign with a map and information about the trail, LNT reminders, etc. You start out walking from either parking area and going around the gate and along an old road for just a few minutes. In a nutshell: Four miles of forest, a half mile of steep mixed terrain. They both come out of the treeline at the base of the infamous boulder field and converge for the final push: 960 feet of elevation gain in just a half mile, climbing quickly into the sky and topping out at an actual mailbox planted right into the top of the peak like the flag on the moon. They both gain the same 4000ish feet, but the New Trail takes 4.7 miles to politely ascend what the Old Trail barrels up in 2.3. You know those siblings that look a lot alike but one’s the ugly one and one’s the pretty one? That’s this. There are two ways up this beast of a mountain: the rugged, brutal, masochistic Old Trail or the gently graded, slowly switchbacking, lush and lovely New Trail. Its tagline should be: Great if you have bad knees, terrible if you have a short attention span.
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