I did this hike 2 weeks earlier as a scouting hike for this one.  Amazing how much changes in 2 weeks.  The trail is still in good conditions, but it was a lot wetter this time.  All the snow we had on the way up Porter last time was gone.  The flowers also started coming out and I saw a lot of red Trillium along the trail, and on the way out a lot of trout lilies too.  Not much I can really say that is different from the previous hike.  It's still beautiful, and it'll be another week or two before all the leaves are out, and maybe a month or two before all the blueberries show up.  I will have to go back up Blueberry itself just for that.

A wetter trail on the Blueberry side is not horrible.  Some mud to deal with but its traveled so much less than surrounding trails, it was not an issue.  Once we got to Porter though, the trails changed.  Pure mud and rock hopping for most of the way to the Cascade trail.  As I noticed 2 weeks ago, lots of TP blooms around the cascade trail junction.  I came prepared and picked up all I saw at the trail junction and deposited it into the thunderbox.  I then found more on the way up Cascade and down the trail on the way out... in total about a gallon bag of TP was picked up.  It was all clean looking and there were no piles of stuff near them, so I can only assume it was women that did this, but its also possible that all the waste was washed away.  It doesn't really matter though, it shouldn't be left like that, and it has now been picked up to discourage people from doing it through the summer.

In the end, it was 7.11 miles over 8.5 hours and a great day to reconnect with a friend I haven't seen for 20 years.  This brings me to 140 miles over 112 hours with 7.6 miles up and 7.1 miles down of elevation.