Length: 5.6 miles
Elevation Gain: 800 feet

My little brother came to visit this past weekend, and to best show him my favorite local Super Dangerous Volcano That Will One Day Awaken & Kill Us All, we decided to hike to the Fremont Lookout in Mount Rainier National Park. My friend Nicole came with us, and we all got the hell out of Seattle bright and early Sunday morning.

The Fremont Lookout is the highest lookout in the park at 7,000 feet. But because you begin the hike at the Sunrise Visitor Center, which is already pretty high up, the elevation gain is easy to handle. In fact, the beginning climb from the parking lot to the trail junction was the most difficult part, and even that was most likely because we went straight from a two-hour car ride to legging it. Even my brother, who has never hiked before, successfully completed this without issue in his running shoes.

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Length: 2 miles
Gain: none

I liked this place so much that I went here twice in one week! It’s a beautiful little slice of estuary life, and I love going here to see shorebirds. I think the best time to visit if you’d like to see birds is as close to sunrise or sunset as possible — I drove here after work from Seattle to see the sun set, and the trees near the visitor center’s boardwalk area were just teeming with birdsong. I am a very subpar birder, though, so I didn’t see too many of the birds, though I certainly did hear them. The ones I was able to identify were: dark-eyed juncos, black-capped chickadees, barn swallows, and Western wood-peewees. But most impressively (to me), an American bittern! He caught a tiny silvery fish and everything.

The boardwalk paths around the visitor center are in good repair, and the shades provide plenty of shade. But the real treat is the new boardwalk that takes you out over the estuary. To most easily get to it, enter the trail to the left of the visitor center and follow the boardwalk until you get to a T-junction past the “Twin Barns.” Go left to hug your way around the barns, and you’ll eventually get to a spot where the boardwalk meets a gravel path. Go onto the gravel path to leave the shade of the trees and follow the path it as it swings out towards the water. You’ll see the new boardwalk in the distance ahead of you.

As you walk further out on the new boardwalk towards the Puget Sound viewing area, look to your right and on a clear day you’ll see Mount Rainier! Maybe you’ll also see the Improbable Seagull Who Can Stand On Water — tell him I said “‘sup.”

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