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Beckler Peak is a hike just outside of the town of Skykomish, Wa, in the Highway 2 corridor. Take Highway 2 east a couple of miles past Skykomish, take a left onto Forest Service road 6066 and drive a dirt road littered with potholes ~6 miles to the trailhead. There are actually two trails from the trailhead. Go up to Beckler or down to a newer trail, which I believe was primarily created by mountain bikers. I haven’t hiked that trail but I don’t think it really goes anywhere unless you’re interested in a long climb followed by a steep descent.
The trail to Beckler Peak is almost like two different trails. The first part is effectively a road walk on an old logging road. The road is quickly reverting to more of a trail but it still feels like a road. About 1.75 miles along though you enter woods and the road becomes a real trail and the feel changes considerably.
This time of year the woods are still covered in snow and with the snow there is no trail to follow. Beckler Peak is a good trail for moderate effort because although it’s listed as being 7.6 miles with quite a bit of elevation gain, it’s a consistent grade from start to finish so you really never feel like you’re working that hard (famous last words). That changes in the snow though. With snow in the forest it’s useless to attempt to stay on the trail and the switchbacks that provide a fairly gentle grade disappear. The best way to attack the mountain is to just go straight up the spine which changes the effort level considerably. Going straight up the mountain cuts ~1.5 miles off the hike, which should tell you something about the added effort. According to my logging spreadsheet I’ve hiked Beckler eight times now and I think I’ve only ever hiked it using the trail about half the time. In the woods with the snow you really need microspikes because although the snow is firmly packed it’s steep enough that it would be a struggle, as well as a little dangerous, not to have traction devices.
Eventually, after much huffing and puffing and numerous little water breaks you’ll make it up to a ridge that you can follow up to the peak. Once on the ridge you sometimes need to switch to snowshoes but at this point in the year even the ridge was packed enough that I didn’t feel the need to switch from spikes.
None of this is scripted so unless you’re comfortable route finding using a gps or map this is probably a hike best left for after the trail melts out, which at the rate we’re going won’t be much more than a month or so out.
Regardless when you do it though the payoff is an amazing 360 degree view of the surrounding terrain. To the north you have Glacier Peak as the main attraction although on this day I could see the top of Mount Baker peaking out in the distance. No matter which way you gaze though you have gorgeous views.
On the lower part of the trail you almost always hear the huffing (guess that’s what I’d call it) of grouse. The first time I heard them I couldn’t figure out what it was until I actually saw one. To be more specific I’m fairly certain these are Sooty Grouse, because of the bright yellow patches that I saw on one. You hear them more than see them but on this particular day one flew up right in front of me which startled me to say the least…
Finally, as I was coming back down the forest service road I came around a corner about a half mile from the trailhead and there were two large black bears in the road. They disappeared over the edge of the road into the woods as soon as they saw me so I obviously didn’t get any pictures but they were both good sized. I also saw a small bear in the same area a couple of years ago so it’s just something to be aware of.
