The 2025 season of Three Fingers maintenance is finished, with a total estimated 1,816 hours of work done by Friends of Three Fingers Lookout (FOTFLO) volunteers this year so far. All work was completed in coordination with the US Forest Service rangers and historians, utilizing only old-style hand-tools in accordance with US wilderness regulations, and in cooperation with the Everett Mountaineers. We made efforts to exactly match the original design and hardware of the 1932 building wherever possible.

Over two years was spent preparing wood for this season’s projects. Rankin Custom Milling in Darrington specially milled locally harvested lumber at no cost to FOTFLO. In thanks, FOTFLO made a donation to Glacier Peak Institute, a Darrington non-profit that aims to empower underserved and marginalized youth through action-based outdoor education and recreation. Our volunteers spent many days shaping, sanding, painting, and prepping the boards for this summer’s projects. In addition, a beautiful new kitchen table and two elegant new stools were hand-crafted to replace the old broken ones made of scrap wood in the lookout. 1300 pounds of materials were gathered, counted, weighed, organized, and transported to the Verlot ranger station. Snohomish County Search and Rescue then donated their services to deliver the heavy building supplies to the lookout by helicopter as part of a training exercise, while our intrepid teammates carefully traversed the glacier very early season to receive and stow the packages. FOTFLO made a donation to the Helicopter Rescue Team in thanks for their help.

Everett Rotary Club funded a grant to purchase WAG bags for hikers to carry out their own human solid waste. Many trips were made out to the three trailheads to refill the WAG bag dispenser boxes, clear branches from the road, remove debris from the culverts, and keep the lookout accessible to hikers and bikers. Everett Mountaineers certified sawyers and our volunteers also cleared some huge logs off the Meadow Mountain trail with old-fashioned cross-cut saws (due to wilderness regulations) and rebuilt damaged tread. Many more logs need to be cut next season!

Late in the summer our highly skilled volunteer work crews went up and lifted the lookout, removed two rotting floor joists, installed new ones, and squared the building. Aging and damaged siding was removed, replaced with new, caulked, and painted on all four lower sides and the upper gable ends. All the doors, shutters, window frames, windows, and sills were inspected for rot and weather damage and many areas were cleaned out, repaired, strengthened, sealed, and painted. The shutter that blew off last winter was found, hauled back up, and temporarily reinstalled. However, the header board that the south shutters attach to is severely damaged and will need to be replaced next year. In the mean time, the south shutters have been bolted shut and made inoperable until those critical repairs can be made in the future.

All the construction debris was neatly packaged and removed from the summit block for safety. The disposal of the construction debris will be another project for next year. An inventory of tools & supplies was made, and the lookout got a thorough cleaning inside and out. Also, the damaged Meadow Mountain trailhead sign was rebuilt.

Enjoy the before and after photos!

How can you help? Always bring a tent with you on this hike. Be gentle on the nearly 100-year-old building and keep the lookout in good repair. Honor the maximum occupancy of 8 persons and limit your stay to allow others a chance to spend the night during busy times. Do not enter the attic - that is for volunteer crews only! Do not hang a hammock inside the lookout as this damages the header boards. Close and securely latch all the shutters when you’re leaving and overnight. Leave the south side shutters bolted closed at all times until the header board can be replaced hopefully next summer. Use the urinal and don’t pee on the lookout itself or the summit block. Use a WAG bag and PACK OUT your own poo. Also pack out all your trash and any other you see! There’s a pile of construction debris at the bottom of the first ladder that we plan to transport out next summer. In the meantime, grab a bucket or bag and throw it in your pack in the way out! Make a donation to Friends of Three Fingers Lookout as all of this is primarily funded by generous gifts from individuals. Tax-deductible donations can be sent by check to the Forest Fire Lookout Association at 2590 W Versailles Dr, Coeur d’Alene, ID 83815-8127, with a note “for Friends of Three Fingers Lookout” in the memo line.

Join us for planning meetings, road maintenance, and trail work this winter as we prepare for our volunteer crews next summer. :) Many hands make light work!

Friends of Three Fingers Lookout

If you’re considering this hike, probably go train some more first.  😊   (This is some minor gate-keeping, for sure, but please hear me out.)  I was the chatty guy on the trail this trip, and almost everyone said this was harder than they expected.  The bike ride to Tupso pass was mentioned often, don’t underestimate it…couple of strong dudes said they’d needed to walk significant portions of the steeper areas with loose surface.  If you’re not a regular biker, it can be a challenge to get re-started on those slopes – made more awkward by the heavy pack – go practice riding gravel while wearing your pack! 

The first group I interviewed went like this:

**I see 4 young men – early twenties – fit appearance – they are getting to their bikes to leave just as we are arriving.**  They are in a hurry even though it’s early afternoon.  “Hey, how was it?” I ask.  “Hated it, never coming back.” says the nearest guy.  The others ride off without talking.  This fella is trying to place a sweatshirt as padding for his bike seat, so fields my follow-up question.  “How’d you hear of the hike?”  “My cousin,” he retorts “and he regrets it too.”  And with that he fled downhill without further chit-chat.

Over the next three days, I saw many signs that some folks were over-extended.  The forgotten packet of trash stashed by the bikes, the bottle full of urine forgotten at the lookout, the remains of illegal campfires with unburnable foil trash, the steaming pile of defecation left fully exposed 4 feet from the trail stinking up the whole area.  These are mistakes made by folks that aren’t prepared for the challenge they’re tackling.  Free wag bags are provided at the Tupso Trailhead (under the empty fuel can and other trash left in that bin), but someone still needed to take a dump they could neither bury nor bag nor walk a decent distance from the trail?  That person is unprepared for this hike.  😊

The upkeep on the trail has suffered due to the washout.  So please apply an “inflation factor” to the distance you’ll be traveling – it’s more than just distance and elevation that will sap your strength here.  The tread to Saddle Lake has sections that are more streambed than trail…and areas where erosion is trying to erase the last traverse up to Saddle lake…and the magic tree-removal fairy hasn’t visited – so expect some large logs to go over and under.  There are loaned machetes available at the trailhead that have resulted in some very helpful brush control on some areas…and also some indiscriminate hacking such as you would expect from gifting My First Machete™ to an 8 year-old.  (The wholly unnecessary blaze hacked into a 350 year old hemlock springs to mind.)

All that said, this is a special place and will reward the effort you make to enjoy it.  In addition to the local WA/OR crowd, we also met folks from New York and Australia.  The goal of most appears to be to overnight in the lookout, so expect to share the space with others on a first-come first-served basis, and I hope that you get good roommates.  The posting of “no drones” has no power over the desire of visitors to replicate the videos produced by the hiking influencers that brought them in the first place.  (Shout out to @BootsAndBoobs, @LookatmeLookatme, @IPosePretty, @BigBootsBigBooty, @BackpackAndMascara, and @TrailsAndBrandDeals).

My 14 year old was able to summit – but we did take the leisurely 3-day expedition style to do so.  The snow was melted out more than I’ve seen in previous years.  There is water at goat flats, but fairly dry above that until you reach the melt from the final snowfield, which gave a goodly-sized trickle waterfall to filter from right beside the trail.  Microspikes were helpful on the last snowfield, but many folks were fine without.  Helmet generally not necessary, but that said, we did experience a rockfall that occurred on the switchbacks below Tin Can Gap.  Alerted by the sound, we sheltered behind a rock shelf and a shower of fist-sized rocks passed on both sides of us.  There are areas where other parties could dislodge some rocks above you as well if you’re up there on a crowded day, so your own judgement on this.  Ice axe also unnecessary unless you are a “belt and suspenders” personality. 

The berries were ripe, and we enjoyed plentiful thimble berries, salmon berries, huckleberries.  The bugs were present but manageable at goat flats – (other years they were much worse). 

Saw a mother Ptarmigan teaching her chick how to eat the flying ants that were stranded in the snowfield.  Lots of frogs this year, but no goats or bear.  Lack of moon gave the full milky way center stage, with some shooting stars to boot.

My second time going to Three Fingers Lookout. My friend and I got to the trailhead at 5am so find trail closed 3.5 miles before bridge. There were 2 wires across the road attached to the trees. We did not bring bikes as we were planning to take Saddle lake meadow trail and did not expect additional millage. There was a car parked on the other side of the wires, a strange looking man opened a window and yelled that trail is closed. We assured him and we're ok with hiking extra millage, but he kept yelling that road is closed. We ignored him and kept going. Total millage of a road walking to entrance of Saddle lake meadow trail was 6 miles from my car. Medow trail is overgrown quite a bit; I felt constant spider web in my face. Only few running streams before meadows so fill up once you see them, after that only couple streams around 1/2 mile before lookout. Water at saddle lake did not look great, I personally wouldn't drink from there. Once we got on the ridge past meadows, another hiker caught up with us and we continued hiking together all the way to the cabin. There are couple steep snow fields where we used our crampons and ice axe and then another field right before lookout where we used just ace axe. Once the first couple patches melts, hike will be doable in spikes and ace axe. Once we got to the cabin, we met another hiker from Oregon and three guys from Netherlands who are biking from Canada to Mexico border and took a detour for Three Fingers. With 7 people we had quite a party there. Worth mentioning that took us 12 hours to hike up with breaks for lunch and water filtering and gear on/off and that extra millage in beginning (it took me 8 hours to hike in September in 2023). We spend one night there and hiked out the next spending 9 hours getting back to our car. Tuesday evening was a gorgeous, clear and warm day, so we got to experience incredible sunset and sunrise.

Found an ice ax on the trail and brought it home. Let me know if it’s yours ewarner9@yahoo.com