Kelly Butte — Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2002

Mount Rainier Area > Chinook Pass - Hwy 410

I did this trip to an abandoned lookout two years ago, and I wanted to go back.The directions from two years ago worked perfectly, except that there is a four-way unmarked intersection where Road # 7030 is the left turn.Fortunately, I remembered the way. Here are the instructions: Drive 2 miles south from Greenwater on Highway 410. Turn left (east) on FS 70 and drive 8.3 miles to road 7030. Follow it--don't lose it--it deteriorates a little but is still driveable. At 6.5 an older dirt road takes off left. Park here. Walk to end of road about a mile to the end, where you will see a dirt track leading up. (A four-wheeler with high clearance could probably drive this far.) There is a steep cliff at this point that leads to the trail, but some good soul had placed a cable there that we used two years ago. The scramble up the cliff seems steeper than two years ago, and the cliff face has eroded, but the steel cable has been replaced by a yellow climbing rope that is much longer and easier to grasp. After the initial steep and narrow switchbacks, the trail levels off to a gentle rise through a huge expanse of blueberry bushes. On this day, the leaves had turned a gorgeous shade of deep red, and the blueberries were black and so ripe that they fell off the bushes when we brushed past them. We were so full of blueberries that we had no room for lunch. We sat on the porch of the abandoned lookout admiring the view and hoping that the cloud obscuring the top of Mt. Rainier would blow away. When Mt. Rainier was totally obscured we came down again, eating a few more blueberries along the way.