Taylor River | Mt Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Washington

In early May we went back to the Cascade range. We were doing our normal - "try to avoid the snow" - spring trip.

We were going to take a trip to one of our old favorites, the Taylor River. A couple years ago the road back to the Taylor River trailhead was paved. Before that you would see a few people back there, but not many. You really needed a vehicle with some ground clearance to get back there. Not any more; and people are taking advantage of it.

There are so many people going back there now that it makes me not want to go there anymore. It's great that people are getting out into our public lands, but the amount of people on the trail made it feel more like an urban trail not a wilderness one. Before, the road conditions limited the amount of people who could get back there. Now, I can foresee some limited access coming our way... but enough of the ranting...

The area is still just as beautiful as it ever was. You really get the "Cascade" effect here. Everything is mossy and green.

Our plan was to hike up the river trail a ways and just find a place to camp. Our time window for the trip was tight and so we were not looking to put in big miles.

A couple miles in we found an outstanding campsite down off of the trail. It was too good to pass by. We quickly got camp set up and went to the river to spend the day.

The second day we decided to back track and go up Quartz Creek. We had passed the trail the day before and since we'd never been up that trail before we decided to see if there would be less people up there. The trail was an old road cut. It climbed up more steeply than river trail. We got our wish, we didn't see another person on the trail. I didn't have a map of this area and we didn't find a decent place to set up camp. Once we got to a lookout point we decided that we would just have lunch and then cut the trip a little short and hike out. Normally that is something that I wouldn't do, but we would've had to hike out near day break to get back in time and so it seemed like the right call this time.

It was a beautiful hike in a beautiful area with great people!