Type of Hike
Day hike
You have to make five turns correctly in the first two miles, but there are signs at each junction and it wasn't hard to stay on the right trail. I started at the Pacific Crest Trail South trailhead between Rainy Pass and Washington Pass and walked through big trees to the Stiletto Peak trail. Around 2.5 miles of switchbacks followed. The trail broke out of the trees for good just as the maintained portion of trail quit. There was a perfectly good path, steep but with cairns, that led up the last mile to the old lookout site.
The views were tremendous and I wondered why I hadn't ever been here before. You can see both Copper and Twisp passes, Liberty Bell and the Early Winter Spires peek out over an adjacent ridge, and about a thousand peaks are visible in the south part of North Cascades NP. A large basin to the south was filled with golden larches. It looked like you could easily travel cross country to Twisp Pass. The 11-mile roundtrip took me about 7 hours, with something like 3500 feet total of elevation gain. Highly recommended.
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