Length: 3.4 miles
Elevation Gain: 900 feet

After my failure to complete the Steamboat Rock hike (post on that one coming later, but to summarize: my body decided to cripple itself with a fear of heights halfway through), I needed to finish one for the sake of my bruised ego.

I’m still obsessed with fire lookouts, so I went to go check out another one. The Kelly Butte Lookout is on the outskirts of Mt Rainier National Park — far enough out that you don’t need to pay the Rainier admission fee to get to this one. Unlike the Heybrook Tower I visited a few weeks ago, this one was open when I got there so I got to peek inside, look at the fire finder, and sign the guest book!

Anyone know how to use this thing? Not me!

The trickiest part about this hike is just getting your car to the trailhead. You have to take a few unmarked forest roads, though the WTA directions are spot on, so follow those and not Google Maps because the latter definitely tries to make you drive through some roads you’re not supposed to be on so that you’ll come across a path blocked by some very confused and concerned campers as you suddenly careen out of the trees. Oops.

The last 15ish miles are on washboard roads, some pocked with intense potholes, but my Mazda 6 made it through. I was also overtaken at one point by an impatient Prius, and if he can Tokyo Drift around the forest roads without issue, I think any vehicle can make the drive.

The trailhead doesn’t say “Kelly Butte,” but it is an obvious trailhead complete with a small parking area and information hutch, so you won’t miss it.

The first third is a super easy amble through the forest on an old, wide logging trail. There’s lots of beautiful flowers lining the trail, including these crazy-looking things. I don’t know what they’re called, so I called them “yellow Star Trek plants” because there is something a little alien about them, don’t you think?

The hardest part is the middle third, where you climb up many, many switchbacks to get up the face of the mountain towards the lookout. But the entire climb is so beautiful, full of mountain views, butterflies, wildflowers, chatty dark-eyed Juncos, agile hummingbirds, and the occasional nervous garter snake that it goes by very quickly. There are lots of flies and bees too, but they generally leave you alone. No bite-y insects, thank goodness. It gets narrow and steep in some places, but even with my fear of heights, I got through it without panicking. Well, without panicking too much, anyway.

Once you get off the switchbacks, you’ll climb the last third of the trail steadily up and through some meadows until you get to the lookout. The trail gets pretty narrow here so the vegetation brushes against your legs, but just think of them as your adoring fans reaching out to touch you as you graze past.

It was cloudy and chilly the day I went, but I stuck around long enough for some of the clouds to break up. Mount Rainier even made an appearance as I climbed back down! On a clear day, the view must be amazing because Rainier is huge.

My friend Meredith gave me a tiny Spock and now he’s my hiking companion. He finds many of my antics quite illogical.

An adorable father and son pair had stayed the weekend in the lookout and were more than happy to share the space with visitors when I got there, and I met another father and son pair lunching outside, where we talked about fishing, achy backs, and Oregon vs Idaho potatoes.

Hikers. They’re good people.

View from the lookout. Not too bad, even for a cloudy day!

From car back to car, including the long chunk of time I spent at the lookout, I completed the hike (at a very leisurely pace) in a little over 4 hours.