Hikes in the Issaquah Alps

Seattle's local mountain range offers a vast selection of hiking trails

The hills surrounding Issaquah offers fantastic hiking opportunities that require only a quick bus ride from Seattle. Some of the hikes here are real wilderness adventures with elevation gains of 2000' or more. There are well over seventy miles of trails to explore just on Tiger Mountain itself, and many more miles of trails on Cougar and Squak Mountains. Because of the low elevation and proximity to the Puget Sound, snowfall is generally light in winter, and the trails are accessible almost year round without special equipment. If you are equipped with warm clothes, poles, and traction devices for your boots (like Yaktrax), the Issaquah Alps can be a great place to explore even when snowy.

The term “Issaquah Alps” was coined by local hikers years ago to describe the officially nameless, hardly alp-like range of low, rounded mountains stretching east from Lake Washington to North Bend. This obviously tongue-in-cheek name took hold over the years, and now everybody--hikers, Issaquah civic boosters, even real estate agents-- uses the term, any trace of sarcasm forgotten.

The Issaquah Alps are actually not foothills of the Cascade Mountains, but the remains of an old mountain range predating the Cascades. Come to think of it, perhaps the Issaquah Alps really do deserve their proud new name, considering they have stood up to countless millennia of erosion by water, wind, and multiple assaults by ice-age glaciers, which ground right over the peaks’ very tops.

A snowy day on Tiger Mountain

Follow the links on the left menu bar to explore the hikes in the Issaquah Alps