Elevation Gain: Approximately 200 ft.
Time: 9:00 am - 10:30 am
Weather: Overcast, cool, periods of light rain.
Wow, if there was ever a week when I thought the streak of hikes might end, this was it. It all started on Tuesday evening when we had a ton of snow dropped in the lowlands of Western Washington. The snow ended up canceling school on Wednesday. Then we were treated to freezing rain the next evening and all day Thursday, canceling school for a second day in a row. Then the predicted warm up late Thursday afternoon never really came, and a few down trees left my school without power and a third snow day. All this time off was great, but I was not very excited to leave my house. The roads were bad, and tree debris was everywhere. By today, most everything was gone off main roads, but since when are trailheads off main roads. I was not particularly enthused to go get out in some nasty conditions. I heard on the weather reports that the snow was not as bad to the south, so I got on wta.org and looked for a hike down south. I found a good 15 miler called Bell's Mountain about 3 hours away. This morning I was early enough, but I did not want to drive 3 hours. I looked again on wta.org and settled on Rainbow Falls State Park.
Took a little over an hour to get there, but about 30 minutes finding out where to park and where to hike. If you follow the signs to the park, you wind up on the north side of the Chehalis River. The park was covered with down limbs, but it appeared some state workers had already cleared out the major blowdowns. I found the hiker parking lot where another truck had just arrived. The two men were looking to hike too, and the saw that the foot bridge across the river was not there any more. The seemed to know that it had been out for a while. I geared up anyway, then drove around back to the south side of the river to park on the side of the road. The side of the road had parking but was packed with debris and snow. I managed to get parked safely from the flow of traffic. I crossed the highway and found a large picnic area. An obvious trail went south up the hill off to the right of the covered picnic area. I read online all these trails loop around to the beginning and the falls were at the end.
As I turned from the picnic area up, I was immediately shocked by the amount of downed trees and limbs. The snow was covered with green limbs, and several blowdowns had fallen over the trail. I began walking then would stop and climb over or crawl under downed trees. The hike was a real bushwhack. I found a trail junction and went left. This trail looped back around eventually to the sam picnic area. Not wanted to be done quite yet, I went back up along that trail, took a right at a junction I had passed earlier. Walked up for awhile, then I hit the same trail I had been on to start with. At this point, I was wet, tired, and sick of bushwhacking. I never found the falls for which this park is named, but I did wander through an old growth forest that somehow wasn't chopped down in the early part of the 20th century. The biggest trees, seemed to be find holding on with all the snow and ice. I took a left and came back down the way I had begun the day.
Orchid: Having the park to myself.
Onion: Not wanting to hike at all.
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