Most people who live along Lakemont Blvd have a default trailhead into Cougar Mountain, and it is almost always Red Town. It is the one you pass on the drive out of the neighborhood, the one with the blue and white sign after the big bend in the road, the one every hiking app ranks first because the loop past Coal Creek Falls is the most photographed trail in the park. What most people do not know is that the Red Town lot holds space for about 35 cars. On a dry Saturday morning, that lot is often full before the rest of the neighborhood has finished breakfast.
Meanwhile, a different trailhead less than a mile down 166th Way SE sits half empty most weeks, right up until the one day this fall when it becomes the trailhead you want to avoid entirely. Knowing which one to use, and when, is a small piece of neighborhood knowledge that saves an actual Saturday morning.
What You're Actually Walking Into at Red Town
Red Town earns its reputation honestly. It sits in the northwest corner of Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park and gives quick access to the coal-mining history that makes this stretch of forest different from a typical Eastside greenbelt. The trailhead takes its name from the coal camp that stood here in the late 1800s, when the company houses were painted red and the settlement served as a rail depot moving coal down to Lake Washington. Walk the Wildside Trail from the parking lot and within a few hundred yards you reach the Rainbow Town Trail, where an old mining cart still sits loaded with coal and a sealed mine shaft entrance is visible across the path. Farther in, a small alluvial flat along Coal Creek marks what was once an improvised baseball diamond for the mining camp before volunteers restored it to native vegetation in the late 1990s.
That density of history, plus the payoff of Coal Creek Falls at the end of the loop, is exactly why the lot fills so fast. The tradeoff is that Red Town was never built to absorb a crowd. Thirty-five cars is a small number for a trailhead this popular, and there is no potable water anywhere in the park, a legacy of the same mining activity that makes staying on marked trails a real safety requirement here, not just posted-sign caution.
One seasonal note worth knowing before you go: Coal Creek Falls runs on seasonal flow, not year round. Through most of August it will look like a modest trickle rather than the waterfall in the photos. It fills back in once fall rain returns, which lines up almost exactly with the race weekend described below.
The Trailhead That Trades Places With It
Sky Country sits at the opposite end of the calculation. Reached off 166th Way SE, its lot is noticeably larger than Red Town's and includes space for horse trailers, since Cougar Mountain still permits horseback riding on several of its routes. There's a restroom at the trailhead, no pass required, and the connector trail fans out toward Military Road, Cave Hole, and Nike Horse Trail before linking into the same waterfall and ridge routes Red Town reaches from the other direction. For most of the year, Sky Country is the quieter option precisely because it is less scenic at the trailhead itself. Nobody drives past a mining exhibit on the way in.
That changes on race Saturdays. Sky Country is the starting point for two separate race commitments that have already reshaped its parking lot this year. A monthly Cougar Mountain Trail Run Series, organized by Northwest Trail Runs and the Seattle Running Club, brought runners to Sky Country on May 9 for a 5.1 and 10.8 mile pairing, on June 13 for 8.2 and 14.5 mile distances plus a 5k, and again on July 11 for a 10.8 and 19.5 mile pairing with its own 5k. Organizers describe this year as the series' 22nd edition, with more than $265,000 raised for King County Parks over its history and Flying Lion Brewery supplying the post-race food and drink.
Separately, and at the same trailhead, Northwest Trail Runs also puts on a bigger single-day race called the Cougar Mountain Trail Run on Saturday, October 31: a 50k, a 19.5 miler, a 7.6 miler, and a 5k, with the registration and start confirmed at Sky Country rather than Red Town. Packet pickup begins at 7 a.m. and the last wave doesn't start until 9:30. If you're used to having that lot mostly to yourself most Saturdays, October 31 is the one morning of the year when the math flips completely.
So the honest version of the advice is this: for most weekends between now and Halloween, Sky Country is the calmer choice. On October 31 specifically, it is the trailhead to avoid, and Red Town, by then swollen with autumn rain and a fuller waterfall, becomes the better call.
A quick side by side for planning purposes:
- Red Town – roughly 35 spaces, fills early on fair-weather weekends, best for mining history and the Coal Creek Falls loop, no water source on site.
- Sky Country – larger lot with horse trailer space, restroom on site, quieter most weekends, becomes the crowded option on race Saturdays including October 31.
- Harvey Manning – reached via a gravel access road off SE Cougar Mountain Drive, the least used of the three main trailheads and the only one with a shot at seeing Mt. Baker on a clear day.
What Else Is Worth Knowing Right Now
A trail report logged in early June flagged a bear near the junction where the Nike Horse Trail meets Cave Hole Trail, close to the Sky Country lot. Bear sightings on Cougar Mountain aren't unusual for a park this size, and they don't change the underlying advice, but it's the kind of detail that only shows up if you're actually checking recent conditions rather than relying on a listicle written two years ago. The park itself is open from 8 a.m. to dusk year round, which matters more as the days shorten heading into the race weekend.
None of this requires a permit or a fee. What it requires is treating the calendar like part of the trail map, the same way anyone who has lived here more than a season already does.
The Actual Planning Window
Between now and October 31, the practical version of all of this comes down to a short list:
- Default to Sky Country on a normal weekend if you want the quieter lot.
- If you're set on Red Town, go early on a weekday rather than a Saturday morning.
- Block out October 31 specifically. Either start well before 8 a.m. from Sky Country, or shift the day's hike to Red Town or Harvey Manning instead.
- Expect Coal Creek Falls to look thin through late summer and pick back up once fall rain arrives, which should be close to race weekend itself.
- Check a recent trail report before heading out, not just for the falls but for current wildlife activity.
None of this is complicated. It's just the kind of thing you only know if you're paying attention to this specific stretch of trail rather than treating Cougar Mountain as one generic green blob on the map. That's the difference between a hiking guide written from a spreadsheet of trailheads and one written by someone who actually knows which Saturday to avoid.
If you're weighing a move into Lakemont, or already live here and are curious what else has changed nearby, Carissa Saffel spends as much time tracking the neighborhood's daily rhythms as its market conditions. Reach out anytime to schedule a consultation, whether the question is about a listing or just about what's happening up the road.
