Between the Mountains: A Quick By Way Walk to Layser Cave

 

Date: July 17, 2021

Place: Layser Cave, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Washington

Coordinates: 46.461718, -121.860038

Length: 0.55 mile

Level: easy

When I took my chikas and their friend on a second road trip to Washington and Oregon in the summer of 2021 I had it planned a little better than the previous year's road trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Teton National Parks. One of my goals for this trip was to visit as many of the cascade volcanoes as our time would allow. After having a lovely and very foggy hike in Mount Rainier National park, our next destination was Mount St. Helens. We found a nice, remote campground between Mount Rainier and Mount Saint Helens. In the morning, on our way to the most famous cascade volcano we found a hidden trailhead and a small, cute trail to a cave which was marked as a point of interest, and decided to stop there and see the cave. 

Our hike as captured by my GPS

 The Layser Cave trail is really short, but it is very nice and merits its own blog post entry. It begins (and ends) with a short flight of stairs that dips into a dense conifer forest.  

Trailhead

Not much was blooming in the deep shade under the trees but the one blossom I did find had me drop my jaw - it was a fairly large cluster of ghost pipe - a parasitic plant of the blueberry family. I've only seen them once before and once after that trip. Such an interesting, unique plant! 

Ghost Pipe, Monotropa uniflora

At the end of a short walk we reached an old and somewhat crumbling observation deck, the view from which was blocked in three directions by the dense vegetation. The vegetation included some dark red-stemmed manzanita, which by themselves are a very nice view. 

Manzanita, Arctostaphilos sp. 

The main reason of having the observation deck there was in full, unobstructed view - the Mount Adams volcano poked its snowy-white head over an optic 'saddle' formed by two closer mountains. Mount Adams is one of the cascade volcanoes, and it is approximately on the same latitude of Mount Saint Helens, which was our next destination on our trip. 

Mount Adams

The trail continued through a less dense forest. Growing tall on the sides of the trails (and sometimes into it) were tall, spindly bushes of poison oak and other forest floor shrubbery. 

Trail

We arrived at the cave mouth and looked around. It looked like the beginning of a lava tube but it didn't continue deep and it was empty. The main interest of this cave, as was stated on an info sign near its mouth, was that it used to serve as seasonal dwelling of local native people, and that it was an archeological site. 

Layser Cave

After checking out the cave we continued on the trail which looped around and back to the main trail. There were many of salal bushes in the forest undergrowth and some of them were blooming. Later on our trip, closer to the coast, we found plenty more salal which were carrying ripe berries, which werea true treat. 

Salal, Gaultheria shallon

In a sunnier spot on the trail back I stopped to take a photo of the very common bird's foot trefoil plant which was blooming  there. All and all there wasn't much bloom on that trail.

Bird's-foot Trefoil, Lotus corniculatus

Layser Cave Trail is a short and easy walk. It's an easy stop on the way and has a nice view of Mount Adams, a shallow cave that by itself isn't all that impressive, but has cultural and historical significance, and a lovely forest all around. For me, seeing the ghost pipe flowers was a special bonus. I was happy that we stopped there.