This is an abandoned trail. Only come here if your navigation is up to the task of finding your way where there is no path to follow, and practice Leave No Trace to avoid damaging fragile terrain.

On paper this abandoned trail looks like it might be an easy (couple of miles, not too steep) way to sneak in the backdoor from a forest road outside Mount Rainier National Park, ending at an intersection with a remote part of the Northern Loop.

In practice I guess that depends on which paper you look at? The trail is shown on USFS maps but absent from other maps of Rainier, and I can find no mention of it in any guide book. As of my visit in 2021 it had only a handful of old Washington Trails Association trip reports, most recently from 2007. It turns out that averaging these sources together comes close to the truth, as the trail only kinda half exists :-)

Challenge #1: how to reach the trailhead? You could drive National Forest Development Road 73, past the Huckleberry Creek and Lake Eleanor trailheads, but that's 20 miles taking over an hour each way: not my idea of fun! Or you could cycle 6 miles up the closed-to-vehicles NFD 74, to where that meets the far end of NFD 73. I chose the latter. It's a pleasant ride through a mix of second growth forest and clear-cuts, with a few stunning views along the way. There's a short washout (hence closure of the road) which I was easily able to wheel my bike past.

Challenge #2: NFD 74 passes over a couple of miles of private land before entering the National Forest. At its start I found a closed gate with a sign stating "PRIVATE PROPERTY. ENTRY PERMIT REQUIRED FOR ALL ACCESS. VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO PROSECUTION." Hmm, thought I. Not sure you're allowed to close a National Forest road to the public... I wrote to Hancock Natural Resource Group to ask what was up. They responded promptly with details of a leasing scheme where I could rent parcels of their land for hunting or camping. This seemed like the wrong answer for can I please just cycle along the road to reach the National Forest, but when I asked for clarification they confirmed: permit required to travel over this area. Unsatisfied, I emailed the Snoqualmie National Forest Ranger District, who replied with helpful information about the state of the road, informed me that the public has a right to use public roads which pass over private land, and that I would not be trespassing as long as I remained on the road until I reached the National Forest (but please don't block the gate when you park). I asked Hancock why their information was different from what the USFS told me, at which point they said oh sure, you can walk or bike that road if you want!

Challenge #3: although maps show NFD 7550 ending near the National Park boundary, it is washed out 3 miles prior. Tracks show that some have schlepped bikes over the washout and continued to ride, but I left mine here and hiked the rest of the way. The distance and map shown above are starting at this point. The abandoned road becomes increasingly more overgrown and trail-like as you continue along it, with no clear transition point from road to trail. It's romantic in the usual way of dying roads being gradually reclaimed by nature.

Challenge #4: once onto the trail proper, adventure begins. At one time this was clearly well maintained, with giant older blowdowns cut to clear the path, but no longer. Parts of the trail still exist and are pleasant to walk, while storms and floods have had their way with others. There is some route flagging and what appear to be recentish volunteer attempts to make improvements in places, but in other spots the path vanishes under huge tangles of fallen trees or is buried in glacial silt where the river has overrun it. I repeatedly lost the trail, resulting in much backtracking plus a few spots where I opted to just bushwhack in approximately the right direction while zigzagging until I found the path again.

The map shown above is a best effort at combining my outward and return GPS tracks, editing out the detours where I got lost. There are probably a few sections where I was wrong in both directions, though :-) Don't worry about where the path appears to cross the West Fork White River, as it never actually does that. The river has shifted course many times over the years, and will be in a different spot today vs. when this base map was drawn.