Two Summits One Day: Cougar and Squak Mountains

Thursday I went out with my father, Dale, and my brother, Gregg.  We wanted to tackle two of the smaller peaks near our homes.  Growing up less than five minutes from these hills and never took the time to summit on either one.  There are many trails on both mountains, and one could spent all day exploring.  Gregg even improved sections of trail on Squak for his Eagle Project.

The two peaks are only separated by the narrow May Creek Valley, that has State Route 900 running through it, connecting Renton and Issaquah.  Since the hills are very close together (there is actually a connector trail you can take to hike on both mountains with out getting back in the car if you want, we didn't take the connector) it is very easy to summit both in just a long morning.  We started at the trailhead of Cougar Mountain at 8:30 and finished around 11:30 back at the car after summiting Squak.

Cougar Mountain
We chose to start at the Wilderness Creek Trailhead.  It is located on SR 900.  The trail allows two great options for a summit.  You can see from my GPS recorded tracks that we took one trail up and the second down.  This is actually Wilderness Peak in fact.  The true Cougar Mountain is just to the North.  However for locals all the peaks in the park are considered Cougar Mountain, this is why we chose to summit Wilderness Peak as it is the highest.

The summit has no view, making the trip a little anti climatic.  However there is a nice bench to sit on and a home made registrar to sign.  There was a small glimpse of Mt. Rainier on the way down.  Nothing that makes the trip a "must do" however.
I am glad I did this relatively short hike.  It is a great one to tackle in the winter when the rain isn't falling.  These hills almost never get snow and can be tackled any time of year.

View Cougar Mountain in a larger map

Getting There:  See map for best directions

Difficulty:  Easy-Moderate

Fees:  None 

Squak Mountain
With only the short few minutes in the car for rest we, all three, headed over to the trail head to summit Squak Mountain.  Like Cougar Mountain there are many ways to get the the top of Squak.  I would say the most popular is from the State Park parking lot off of SE May Valley Road.  Most of Squak Mountain is a State Park.  There are horse trails and hiking trails.  One service road to the top is a popular route but is closed to public vehicles, it does however make for a smooth, easy going, trail.  We chose to cheat a little bit.  By this time Gregg was having some semi serious pains in his knew, but wanted to finish with the hikes we had planned.  Therefore we drove up to a trailhead on the North side of the mountain that starts at 740 ft.  This saved us from climbing an extra 400 ft.
We took the Bullitt Access Trail to the Central Peak Trail to the summit. Unlike Cougar, with its rolling terrain, this trail was pretty much climbing the entire time.  One interesting part of Squak Mt. is the human history.  The Bullitt family settled on the hill in the early 1900's and there are still remains.  We past by these as well, heading straight to the top for the sake of Gregg's knee.

View Squak Mountain in a larger map

One awesome part of hiking with Gregg was that he informed me of a free program from Microsoft.  It is called PhotoSynth and allows anyone to make great panoramas and synths from multiple photos.  The panorama below is of the veiwless peak on Squak.  I can't wait to get out to other, more impressive places to use this program with.

Getting There:  See map for best directions

Difficulty:  Easy-Moderate

Fees:  Discovery Pass or $10 day pass if parking at the State Park, No fee if park at the trail head on Mountainside Drive SW (location we used)