This trail and Elk Lake have been on the list for awhile. Hiked to the old lookout and enjoyed seeing the vegetation coming back for the recent fire. Came across a few downed trees and took care of a few with the pack saw. It is not a trail you do a second time but fun once. Good view of Lena Lake and some wild blackberries along the road.

Wow, I like this trail!

Note that hiking this one is 25% offroading adventure. The road that climbs up to the trailhead is challenging, and I definitely wouldn't attempt it without a high-clearance vehicle. There are steep water bars periodically, so if you don't like how the road starts out, know that it only gets worse. You don't *need* four-wheel-drive, but after spinning my rear wheels getting over one of the berms, I shifted into 4WD and was glad I had it. It gets steep enough that my "low washer fluid" light came on!

There's also debris -- fallen rock and trees -- strewn about, so I think whether this road is passable without hopping out to perform some minor manual work varies day to day. And I can't imagine running into a vehicle coming the other way on much of this road. It's steep and narrow, and backing up to let someone pass would be nerve-racking. 

As the directions say, the trailhead is at about the 3.1 mile mark on FS-2421, maybe a couple of clicks further. See the attached picture showing the wrong trailhead (leading down to an even earlier starting point, perhaps?), which is followed a stone's throw later by the actual trailhead.

The trail has some signs of recent work, for which I was grateful, but be aware that it's never great, and it's often faint, overgrown and hard to follow. But it's always there if you look carefully, except for maybe a couple of spots where a complex tangle of blowdowns obscures it, but press on and it will reappear.

If, like me, you use Gaia GPS, note that the first part of the trail isn't on the map, only the section after you cross the road further up. Both parts are a nice hike, though, so I would definitely start lower. It's only a little over 1.8 miles from this lower starting point to the lookout site, so why not?

The Gaia map shows the trail continuing a bit past the lookout site, down the ridge and back up to the next highpoint of a similar elevation, but I didn't go past the lookout. That was a pleasant area to take a coffee break, but to my mind, the rocky outcropping that's a brief and easy scramble up from the trail a bit earlier on the ridge -- and has a USGS benchmark on top -- is the better spot, although it doesn't look west toward some of the more impressive Olympic peaks. I guess the bottom line is it's worth tagging both.

Bugs were swarming where I parked at the trailhead, which didn't bode well, but that was actually the only place where they bothered me, both coming and going. Otherwise, it was just a lot of bees working hard to harvest pollen from the blooming wildflowers, mostly rhododendrons and beargrass. 

I'll be back for a sunnier day.

Rd 2421 needs high clearance 4X4, large and challenging drainage trenches cross road repeatedly. Large tree across road at mile 3 on Rd 2421 was start of hike. Nice hike in beautiful weather. Trail was in reasonably good shape until high on the ridge, then challenged by blowdown requiring bushwhacking above or below obstacles (several large obstructions during last 1/2-3/4 mi); finally gave up on trail and hiked directly to ridge top summit. Never found fire lookout debris and suspect it may have been further along the undulating ridge top, but blowdown was terrible on top and was content with our destination. Minor snow in the shade. Was happy with how visible trail was for majority of hike. 

Blog version (disclaimers)

Quick-and-dirty version

Access: Road 2421
Round Trip: 7 miles
Elevation Range: 840′-3850′
Essential Gear: microspikes
Dog-Friendly: yes

Route

1. From the lower parking (or upper, depending on the road conditions), walk the logging road to 1600'.
2. Pick up the ridgeline trail with a hidden sharp turn by the ribbon-flagged entrance and continue through the logging debris to the ridgetop.
3. Traverse the bumps on the crest to the former lookout site.

Highlights

• Expansive views of The Brothers Wilderness to the north and Puget Sound on the east
• Spotty vistas to the west and the south

Lowlights

• Snow-turned-slush by mid-morning
• Left snowshoes in the car

We chase lookout structures and sites.  We had tried this one before but due to road being closed, we couldn't quite get close enough to make it.

The road is now open, but they built some crazy tall berms into it so while our CRV made it to where the trail comes in from Elk Lakes, it wasn't going to make the next section so we parked it there.  We carried five liters of water each up the rest of the road and trail - there is no water anywhere along there EXCEPT we did see a source part way up the road but not enough to save you from carrying up water.

Someone has been working on lower end of trail!  The start of trail is now easy to see.  It is maybe a quarter mile past the road gate on the left.  It was cleared out and much easier than the mess we found last time.  It was still really narrow in places, but it was passable.  Once we got to the ridge, there was a place where trail was a challenge to spot.  We had gaia to help.  We had more blowdown and overgrowth.  We kept going up and wondered if the report of one flat spot to camp was real.  It was!  Just before the lookout site is a place that was built up with rocks and perfect for a tent.  The last of the Rhodies were blooming.  There were peak a boo views from site, but best views were down a bit.  Even those were not the usual 360 degrees of wow in most lookouts or lookout sites.  Still we were glad to finally get it done.

Lots of debris at this site.