This is a great hike near Seattle! Good elevation gain and interesting features along the way. Only gripe is every dog we came upon (and there were several) was off-leash and we had to ask every owner to leash their dog so we could pass with ours. Please keep your dogs on leash - it’s a park rule!

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.

The fall color around Puget sound is exceptional this year.  This seems to happen about once ever 5 years or so.  The Big Leaf Maples are bright yellow right now. It's supposed to be windy tonight so some of the leave may fall but I think it will still be great for a few days.

There was running event that we had to contend with.  The runners were all very friendly and polite but it was still quite annoying to have to step aside ever few minutes to let them by.  I will check the running event sch next time and try to avoid it.

4.7 mi loop, 1250 ft

Only ~30 min drive from Seattle. Perfect for a little getaway and a good workout for relatively short mileage.

Really nice trail but very steep for half of the loop to top. No lookout at top just ends to a small dirt patch area with a little free library at top.