Hiking Little Mashel Falls

Little Mashel Falls is a gorgeous waterfall within an hour of JBLM. A relatively flat trail that is about 5 miles long depending how much you explore, this is a great half day trip. Here’s what you need to know about Hiking Little Mashel Falls!

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We started out at Bud Blancher Trail. You can find this trail on All Trails. This is the App I use every time we go hiking. I love it because you can see exactly where you are during your hike and pull up directions to the hike directly on your phone. You can get All Trails here.

Little Mashel Falls via Bud Blancher Trail
5.3 Miles, Easy
Approx. 50 minutes from JBLM
Dog Friendly

The trail is right outside of Eatonville, a small town on the way towards Rainier. There is a nice size parking lot and it was not crowded the day we went. There are trash cans and a map at the start of the trail. It is a highly trafficked trail but there are multiple places to start and end so I wouldn’t say it was crowded or busy! There is a port-o-potty towards the beginning of the trail and that’s the only restroom!

The first mile and a half are a nice wide flat trail that would be stroller friendly. The trail up to the falls, not so much.

The first bridge you come to there is a trail down to the water. This would be a great spot to splash around in during the summer!

The trail was absolutely gorgeous when we hiked in the fall. There were gorgeous yellow leaves everywhere. They were bigger than my head!

You will come to a fork in the trail, you can continue straight or take a left. There is a sign that says “Little Mashel Falls Trail”. You want to take a left towards this sign! This is the end of the Bud Blancher Trail and where you start on the Little Mashel Falls Trail. From here is where it starts to gain in elevation. There are blue and white diamond markers on the tree to keep you on the right path since you will pass a few more forks.

Aurora (and I) did great with the length. Honestly we didn’t do the full 5.3 miles. When we got to the middle falls trail we decided to go down and check it out. It was so beautiful we decided that was good for us and not to hike all the way to upper falls. You’ll come to two places where there are trails off to the left. The first is Lower falls (we did not do) and the second is Middle falls where we went. If you keep going straight that is Upper Falls.