Weather was uncertain today, so I headed for Cougar Mountain. This time of year it's nice to have a "pick a size" kind of hike so close to Seattle. There are so many great trails and loop possibilities.
This is in trail order:
I started at the Wilderness Creek trailhead. This probably has the most elevation gain of the Cougar Mountain trails. It also loses all the city noise once you pass the first trail junction. The trail was pretty dry today, but there were a couple of blowdowns to jump over.
From there, I turned onto the Longview Peak / Deceiver trail and headed to Doughty Falls. The falls are currently a trickle (3rd picture). Supposedly best time to see them is in early spring, like March. They've put a nice new wooden fence in since I was last here and whoever did it stacked the remaining wood into a funny sculpture (2nd picture).
From the Deceiver Trail I looped back on Shy Bear Trail to the Wilderness Peak Loop and back down. The forest floor on the entire hike was covered with bright fallen leaves, but this portion of today's hike still had some colorful trees.
I saw tons of mushrooms the entire hike. There were very few people - I only encountered 5 people. Round trip on this loop was slightly over 6 miles and 1500' of elevation gain.
Comments