Suntop Lookout

Suntop Lookout sits on a fifty-two-hundred-foot peak on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie / Mt. Rainier boundary, six miles up Forest Road 7315 from Highway 410. The short trail covers two miles round trip with under five hundred feet of climbing — easy by mileage, but the payoff is on a much grander scale than the work suggests. Recent ADA improvements have widened and graded the route to the lookout itself.

The view is the trail's reason for being. Rainier dominates the south, only thirteen miles distant, with the Cowlitz and Carbon glaciers visible on a clear day. The Cascade crest runs north, the Olympics rise to the west across Puget Sound, and Mt. Baker breaks the northern horizon. The lookout itself, still standing, dates from the fire-watch era and gives the summit its character.

Hikers who want more can leave from lower trailheads and climb the full sixteen-and-a-half-mile route from FS 73 — twenty-eight hundred feet of gain through forest before breaking onto the ridge. Most parties take the short version. Northwest Forest Pass at the trailhead, vault toilet at the top.