Cascade Overland Adventure - August 2006
Day Three
After another restful night of sleep, we awoke to another beautiful sunny morning in the northwest. When camping, first thing in the morning, I like to take a morning walk with the dog. On this day, I walked my dog downstream a short distance and got some photographs of Tower Rock. Very quiet and peaceful.
After breakfast and packing up camp, we decided upon the day’s journey. We were now in country that I was very familiar with. I spent many hunting seasons learning about life in elk camp. This was the area that my dad would annually go elk hunting for the entire season in addition to multiple trips throughout the year deer hunting and camping.
Even I didn’t need a guidebook for this area, the next leg of our overland adventure is outlined as Tour 50 - French Butte in the book Washington Byways
From our campsite, we headed west on FS 2801 a very short distance until it met a junction with FS 28. We turned left on FS 28 and the almost an immediately right on FS 76 which continues to follow the Cispus River downstream on its south bank.
After a short distance, there is another junction with FS 77 where we turned left up the hill (the only direction). This road is marked as Burley Mountain. From here you start to switchback out of the Cispus River valley on a nice winding paved road passing numerous waterfalls along the way. Eventually the road turns to gravel.
At about 17 miles, there will be a junction. To the right is FS 77 (which we will follow later). To the left is FS 7605. We traveled left on FS 7605 and in less than two miles is a spur road to the right (086) that leads to Burley Mountain. Travel about 0.5 mile and there will be a parking area. Many people park here and hike up to the lookout. The gate was open this day so we continued up the steep, narrow road to the lookout. If you meet another vehicle, somebody will need to back up a short distance because there is no turn around. Fortunately, the pick up truck we met only had to back up a short distance to a switchback wide enough for us to pass. 
In about a quarter mile from the first parking area, we parked just below the summit of the lookout (plenty of room for two short wheel base vehicles to turn around). You can drive to the summit, but there is only room for one, maybe two vehicles.
Burley Mountain is one of the few forest fire lookouts with the original building still standing. The door is unlocked so you can even go inside the building. It’s a wonder that it hasn’t been vandalized or even worse yet, burned down. The views of the southern Cascades don’t get any better than this. From this 5300 foot peak, you’re standing almost in the middle of four snow capped volcanoes. You look one direction there is Mt. Rainier, another Mt. St. Helens, in another direction there is Mt. Adams, and further south in Oregon is Mt. Hood.
After lunch and photos (where I ran out of space on my memory card and had to delete some shots), we headed back down the mountain back to FS 77. Soon after reaching FS 77, we reached a four way junction and headed straight though (the roads were not very well marked the day we drove them) to continue on FS 77. The road begins to climb on a narrow pumis, dirt and gravel non-maintained track.
We soon reached open meadows with additional views Mt. Rainer, Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens. In August, the huckleberries in this area are ripe. As in years past, there were many Native American groups camped out in the area picking the delicious berries. As the road zig zags followed the ridgeline, we passed French Butte and just below Pinto Rock.
A short distance past Pinto Rock, we came to the junction with FS 28. We took a right (west) that led us to FS 25 (a nice paved forest road) in about 3 miles.
Since we were in the area, we decided to make the trip to the Windy Ridge viewpoint of Mt. St. Helens. We took a right (north) on FS 25 a few miles until we reached FS 99 that is clearly marked for all visitors.
FS 99 is a nice paved road designed to handle visitor traffic to the Windy Ridge visitor center overlooking Spirit Lake. There are multiple vista points of Mt. St. Helens and of the devastation of the 1980 eruption. At the end of the road, you reach the visitor center. At the visitor center, one can take in the view directly into the crater of the mountain, and then take in a hike on one of the many trails in the area. A forest pass is required if parked at any of the designated trailheads. Since I had the dog (not allowed on the trails) and no way of locking our gear in an open top Jeep, we enjoyed the views and took some photos before setting off.
A few miles from the Visitor Center, there is a parking area and nature trail system for Meta Lake. Immediately past the parking area is FS 26 that leads to Ryan Lake then onto FS 25 to Randle, Washington. This road used to be part of a loop that the forest service developed to keep traffic flowing in primarily one direction. Apparently that idea has been abandoned because there are no signs on the north end directing travelers to Mt. St. Helens and none from FS 99 directing visitors back to Randle. We soon found out the reason why.
FS 26 is marked as a non-maintained road. This probably scares a lot of the tourists to visitor center away (plus there are no signs that state where the road leads). 
The road was actually in decent shape. There were multiple areas where the road was repaired intermixed with short sections of gravel. There are also many spots where the pavement has sunk down, but nothing that would prevent a careful driver of a standard car from driving it.
FS 26 starts out by dropping into the Green River drainage on the western flank of Strawberry Mountain, initially in the area affected by Mt. St. Helens and then into various stages of growth from past clear cuts. Once past the Ryan Lake, the road follows the Quartz Creek drainage most of the way back to FS 25. Once we were back to FS 25, it was only a short distance to Highway 12 and the end of our overland journey.
Conclusion.
In three days we traveled around 500 miles, much of it on dry, dusty logging roads. In our journey, we visited two fire lookout sites, traveled over multiple passes, and flanked the borders of the three major volcanoes in the Southern Washington Cascades and several wilderness areas. The weather was perfect for camping and traveling in an open top Jeep.
Once we were home, I could practically take a measurement of the layer of dust in my Jeep. It would take me several days to clean my gear and all of the dust out of my Jeep. Well worth the effort for the adventure we had. I can’t wait for the next adventure.
My photo gallery of the trip is located at http://www.flickr.com/photos/locked4low/.
My son’s photo gallery of the trip can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/smbisig/.
Cascade Overland Adventure: Intro | Day One | Day Two | Day Three
Tags: 4wd, 4x4, 80-series, Adventures, bethel ridge, buck meadows, burley mountain, camp, campground, camping, campsite, cascade mountains, cascades, chain of lakes, cispus river, cle elum, cliffdell, crow creek, crow creek campground, ellensburg, expedition, forest, four wheel drive, french butte, goat rocks, gps, green river, horseshoe lake, huckleberries, hunting, jeep, johnson creek, killen creek, land cruiser, landcruiser, little naches river, lookout, manastash, meadows, meta lake, milk creek road, mt adams, mt hood, mt st helens, national forest, nile road, olallie lake, oregon, overland, packwood, pinto rock, quartz creek, quartz mountain, rattlesnake creek, rimrock lake, ryan lake, snoqualmie pass, south cle elum ridge road, spirit lake, strawberry mountain, takhlakh lake, taneum, taneum campground, tieton river, timberwolf mountain, tower rock, trail, travel, tripod flats, walupt lake, washington, washington cascades, wenatchee national forest, white pass, windy ridge, wrangler, yakima, yj