Burley Mountain, Angel Falls Loop & Cispus Braille Trail — Monday, Jan. 18, 2021

This was a plan B hike for me and Ngie, today. Plan A was Watch Mountain Lookout, but the road we were planning to use ended up being a private quarry road, so we switched to Burley Mountain Lookout. Because it was a Plan B hike, we didn’t do a lot of research so it ended up being a bit of type 2.5 fun. Lol.

Originally we were going to walk up Forest Road 7605, but as we were driving I noticed there was a trail we could take instead and we decided it would be “more fun” to hike a trail. Omg we never learn!!! Long story short, it was the opposite of “more fun.”

We followed the route outlined in the hiking guide, more or less. Parked across the street at the Cispus Education Center then took Covel Creek Falls trail... there are several creek crossings with bridges removed that some might find tricky, but I didn’t think it was too bad. Covel Creek Falls was amazing! That was a dramatically wonderful thing to stumble on. I loved how the trail went behind the waterfall! So magical!

After that, the trail sucks. Lol. It joins up with the Burley Mountain trail, which is only two miles, supposedly, but it was the longest two miles of my life. SO many downed trees, but not only downed trees.. also significant areas of erosion. It was EXTREMELY difficult to get over/under/through all those trees and it took forever. A LOT of swearing happened, but I’ll spare you all. The trail is also fairly steep. I was extremely disgruntled.

Finally, the trail joins up with the forest road we should have gone up from the start. Shortly after that intersection, the snow started. At first it was hard and uneven and I started with microspikes. Closer to the lookout it got deeper and I switched to snowshoes. It felt like it took forever but we finally made it to the lookout. Beautiful views of Rainier, Adams, St. Helen’s, Hood, etc.

At this point it was getting late. We decided to just walk back on the road even though it added quite a bit of mileage. We didn’t want to go through those downed trees in the dark THAT bad. Walking down the road was MUCH easier. But then.. Ngie saw some glowing eyes in the dark off the road. This day just keeps giving!!! Honestly, I didn’t see the eyes but I immediately start banging my trekking poles and yelling more curse words until they disappeared. I was crazy paranoid the rest of the walk down, haha. We ended up scream singing stupid songs from Rocky Horror Picture Show and SNL and looking over our shoulders constantly.

Finally we made it back to the actual road, but we still had more than two miles to get to our car. A homeowner came outside, probably to see what the noise was about. He was really nice and offered us a ride, but we declined because, covid. We also heard a coyote on this final stretch. When we got back to the car I almost cried in relief, haha.

Total stats:

Cispus Education Center to the lookout: 6.82 miles

Lookout to Road 76 on the service road: 8.01 miles

And then 2.65 more miles of road walking.

So 17.48 miles total, according to Gaia. That’s my longest hike ever and my feet hurt. Lol.

My advice, if the lookout is your destination, skip the trail and just walk up the forest road! Heck, you can even drive up almost halfway before even encountering snow! It’s definitely impossible to drive all the way up to the lookout right now, but you can probably turn it into something MUCH shorter, then go and hike JUST to Covel Falls separately. Save yourself a lil suffering! Do as I say, not as I do!