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Another summit from the Mountaineers' "Guide to100 Peaks at Mt. Rainier National Park" list, Paul Peak is a forested climb culminating in a forested summit....not much in the view department, but pleasant enough. This forest is easy to negotiate, pretty much void of thick entanglements. The access is easy to find: after entering the park boundary on the Mowich Lake road, there is the “Paul Peak” trail.
I’ve been off grid for a while since leaving Colorado on May 12th, occasionally resurfacing to check in with civilization. Lots of biking, skiing and hiking. Whilst hanging at Packwood with a retired friend of mine, I decided to bag one of the 100 Peaks in Mt. Rainier Mountaineers list, an easy one right off the Wonderland Trail between Box Canyon and Indian Bar. In fact the off trail section to Bald Rock (5904’) was easy going and more of a hike than scramble, but negotiating the Wonderland “Trail” above 4500’ was mostly on snow and rather tedious, requiring due diligence to stay in the vicinity of the trail. The western slopes are currently experiencing a record setting heat wave so the melt off should be accelerated substantially over the next week. I’m not complaining, I had the “trail” to myself and the views were unique on the spur that housed Bald Rock, looking back towards the mountain with the Cowlitz Divide in the foreground. This outing was 10 miles with 3100’ of climb, but the snow travel compounded the difficulty a bit.
Why post this in the Off-Trail section? Because the simple bridges over the North and South Mowich Rivers tend to wash out practically every year. In 2020 the park even diverted hikers to a large log to compensate for the loss of one of the major bridges. During the exceptional low snow year of 2015 I set out to hike the west 57 miles of the Wonderland (Longmire to Sunrise) on June 9. I had 3 areas of concern: the Mowich River crossings, the Winthrop Creek crossing and Skyscraper Pass area. No trail maintenance had been done and all the previous year's bridges over the Mowich rivers were out. I was able to cobble together enough logs to stay feet dry across the entire flood plain. I also show a nighttime crossing in 2020, which utilized the same log I used in 2015.