Agate hunting on the Red Top Lookout Trail near Cle Elum with two kids and a dog and the cutest little outhouse we’ve ever seen

Ever since we went rockhounding a few weeks ago with the kids at Hansen Creek, hunting for rocks has been on everyone in my whole family’s minds. One of the guys even bought a rocktumbler at the beginning of summer so he’s been dying to find gems worthy of the two to three weeks dedication that it takes to actually tumble them into treasures. And while we could go back and do the same trail over and over again, I try to mix things up. I was excited to find out about agate hunting at the Red Top Lookout trail because it seemed like an adventure we could do in a few hours, I read there were agate beds for the kids to explore, there is a fire lookout that seemed incredibly scenic and it was a hike the dog could do as well.

I am learning that there are a LOT of hikes that aren’t dog-friendly in our state and I didn’t pay attention to this before I became a dog-owner. The Red Top Lookout Trail hike is a little bit of a drive from Seattle but if you’re staying at Suncadia, it’s less than an hour away.

The Road to Red Top Lookout Trail and Bring your Northwest Forest Pass

It is not easy to find some of the roads up to the Red Top Lookout Trail so make sure you use a site like All Trails or Washington Trails Association or a local guidebook (we also used Hikes for Children, Western Washington and Cascades) to familiarize yourself with the directions before you go. There is limited cell phone reception in the area and in most places so we usually screenshot the directions as well as a bigger map of the area, just in case we get lost and can’t connect to GPS. Make sure you bring your Northwest Forest Pass too. I did not see an area to pay but I might have missed looking for it because we had our pass.

And where are the agates on this trail?

We sadly did not find any agates on this hike this time. There is a sign that tells you where to branch off of the Red Top Lookout Trail to get to the Agate Beds. We read somewhere that we needed to hike about 30 minutes after this sign. We came to an area where the ground looked like people had been digging but we didn’t see any people digging when we were there. But there was a cute little outhouse in this area so it seemed like this was another clue that we were probably in the right place. We didn’t have a lot of time because we wanted to see the sunset from the Red Top Lookout part of the hike, but if you are hiking with really little kids, the agate beds seemed like the easier part of the hike so you could even just do this part of the hike alone. We continued from the agate trail back to the Red Top Lookout trail and parts of that trail up to the fire lookout are steep and maybe a bit scary. We ended up picking up our little pup a few times on the steeper sections.

But the cutest little outhouse on the Red Top Lookout Trail?

Maybe it’s just because we hit this area right at sunset, but the little outhouse perched on the cliff looked stunning. Not stunning enough to try it, but if you are into cool outhouses, this would be the place to go. The fire lookout was really neat to see as well, but it was not staffed when we were there so we couldn’t go into it. On our way back down to the parking lot, we left a little bit before the sun actually set so we wouldn’t have to drive too far in the dark. Make sure you bring flashlights with you if you do this trail at sunset. And always check the weather (and now even the AQI) before you go too-we were here on a sunny September weekend but smoke rolled in the next day and we wouldn’t have been able to do it then.

Terumi

Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys.  She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live.  She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)