Carbon Glacier Trail — Hotel in Prairie Ridge

If you’re planning a day-hike from Seattle, this hike is ideal for combining mountain biking and hiking. The main trail is a relatively flat gravel and dirt road that goes for several miles along the glacial river bed which is very wide. Starts out through a temperate rainforest with huge cypress trees. There are some short hikes off of the main trail to an old mine entrance and to a couple of waterfalls (you cannot bike to these though). This hike is good if you are coming from Seattle and are somewhat time limited as the Carbon River entrance to the park is at the NW corner of the park. I hiked it without a bike and enjoyed it, but would have liked to have had a bike to get farther along the main trail. I turned around after visiting Chenius Falls. The hike to the Chenuis Falls trailhead is 3.5 miles from the entrance. No view of Mt. Rainier on this trail up to where I turned around. Beautiful hike and...

This used to be the best place to take your kids and family. Somehow it has changed. You now have city people showing up at your campground and acting like they own it because it's public property. Who wants to be somewhere that random strangers come through your camp site. The secret got out. Additionally you have the young adults racing up and down the street all hours of the night. You come up here for piece and quiet not for this stuff. We left 2 days early because of all this. People parking in our camp spot taking video and pictures of my kids, and rude city people with no respect or common decency....

Obviously it’s a beautiful spot … the river, the mountain, of course are five stars!! The four stars are for the trail itself, relative to other local hikes of moderate (6 miles or so) distance. If you’re looking for that level of day hike this is a moderately appealing one. You're basically hiking on a level, gravel road, for at least three miles. Old growth trees, both standing and fallen, line the trail. Spur trail about a mile from the parking lot, on the right, leads up a steep ravine to an old spooky abandoned mine shaft. Parking is easy...