Driveway Butte 9/13/2024

Driveway Butte

9/13/2024 9.0 miles 3100 ft

Picked this one to do on our way to Winthrop for a Hart’s Pass birding weekend.  Hart’s Pass area has a tiny bit of Whatcom County still on the eastern side of the Cascades so it still counts for my Whatcom County list! This trail was nice because it was right off HWY 20 starting by the Klipchuck Campground, we were the only ones in the parking lot.  Starting off on trail 481 and then take a right on the Driveway Butte Trail, there is a sign that says 4 miles to the top.

Right away we were excited about the new birds we were seeing.  We saw Clark’s Nutcrackers and Red-breasted Nuthatches.  Always, hard to keep hiking when there are birds!  The trail was on the steeper side early on and we meandered through the woods.  We made it quickly to the switchbacks; the trail is in really good shape it got a little sandy in some areas and I had seen where people had slipped down the slope.  We hit the saddle at about 2 miles and worked our way through the meadow, so pretty! The growth from the fire 20 years ago (Needles fire in 2003) was amazing, all the little spruce trees popping up.  Eventually you can see where you are headed and for some reason it looked really far away.

We continued relatively flat for about a mile and started heading NE towards the Butte.  We saw so many Mountain Bluebirds, lots of time was spent looking at these birds.  The last push to the top was STEEP! There is a trail to follow but it has been cut and cheated so it is easily lost in some spots.  My geology rock search ahead of time said look for quartz crystals and something with iron that I forget.  Nothing exciting, I did find a nice piece that had small quartz crystals. 

At the top (5982 feet) there remnants at the location of the old lookouts (slant-walled cupola and a tower) that were there until 1953 and at least two USGS benchmarks.  Did my summit handstand, took some pictures, and ate some lunch.  Really beautiful 360 views that you get from lookout locations.  These mountains over here are new to me, we did see Goat Peak which we had done the year before and reminisced about how we had a flat tire at the top of the 15-mile forest road…

Anyways, great hike, great trail conditions, great views all around.  I will probably never do this again just because I do not feel like there is any reason to, not enough time to summit everything!  We saw one other person on the way down.

Bird list: eBird Checklist – 13 Sep 2024 – Driveway Butte Trail, Mazama US-WA 48.63427, -120.53269 – 19 species