I headed out to Ingalls Creek with Cheryl and her daughter Stephanie on this first warm day of the year. This has been the year of the seemingly never ending winter and this was a nice hike on a beautiful day. I've never seen as much trilium as I did on this hike. We saw Calypso Orchids, Trilium, Arrowleaf Balsamroot, Paintbrush, Lupine, Glacier Lilies, Tiger Lilies (not yet bloomed), Silvercrown, Western Serviceberry, Red Flowering Currant, Ballhead Waterleaf, Oregon Amenones, Pioneer Violet and a few more of which names I am unsure of.
Ingalls creek is a good spring destination due to the large variety of early blooming wildflowers. As the trail follows along the creek, you're hardly ever farther than earshot of its cacophony of cascading waters and turbulent rapids, in fact at times it's hard to hear anything above the roar of the water.
The grade of the trail is generally easy on the legs. A good destination is the Falls Creek Camp at 6 miles. The trail only gains a couple thousand feet in that distance. Later in the year, after the majority of the snow has melted and the creek is fordable (the creek was much too high for us to ford when we were there) you can cross over to the Falls Creek trail.
The Ingalls Creek trail is located about a mile up Ingalls Creek Rd which is a left turn coming from I-5 at about 12 miles north of Blewitt (Swauk) Pass on Hwy 97. A NW forest Pass is required to park at the trailhead.
We hiked about a mile and a half beyond Falls Creek camp and had lunch before returning the way we came. The trail is in excellent condition up to the Falls Creek trail junction, beyond that it is a tangled mess of blow downs. We scrambled over and around about twenty blowdowns before finding a nice spot on the river to have lunch. All in all it was a great day to be on the trail.
*attempt*
I like attemp’ better. 😉