Directions: Take highway 410 East from Enumclaw 32 miles.  Take a left on Forest Service Road 7174 and follow it 6.7 miles to its end.
Trail Notes: So after finding Noble Knob and Mutton Moutain on my mapping software I figured I should give it a shot.  I wasn't exactly sure where the turn off for this trail was and wound up overshooting the forest service road 7174.  Instead I went to the handy dandy information booth up the road about a mile further up the road.  It turned out this was a mixed blessing.  On the one hand it helped me find the road, but on the otherhand the information led me to the conclusion that I want to go to Corral Pass to start the hike, rather than take the deep creek trailhead and climb the ridge.  Still it was mixed, on retrospect it is probably better to go to Corral Pass anyway.  Take note though this road is quite rough and my honda had a bit of a stuggle trying to find a good route up the rough road.  Still you can do it in a passenger car you just need to be careful.

So after driving up 7174 you get to the Corral Pass trailhead which has a facilities for horses.  Also it appears these trails are open to Mountain biking.  Starting out from the trailhead I chose to take the first uphill section and to work across the eastern edge of the ridge rather than the traverse trail. I would recommend doing the ridge first and the traverse on the way back.  Within about 15 minutes you find yourself on the ridge line and there are nice views of the Stuart range to the east and of Mt Rainier to the west.  The going is easy and the trail spends about 1/2 hour meandering on the ridge before decending to join the main trail.

The main trail is best described as a traverse and isn't very difficult - in fact it looks to mostly be some road which nature has reclaimed.  Makes for nice mountain biking, but pretty boring hiking.  So you follow the traverse trail about 30-45 more minutes, at which point you arrive at a junction leading either down towards deep creek or takes a spur toward Noble Knob and Lost Lake.  Along the way you pass Mutton Mountain, which at this point in more like Mutton Mound.  From the spur to Noble Knob you go for about 30 minutes before descenting down a ridge to the East and hit a couple switch backs which deliver you to a traverse to Noble Knob.

Part of the story about Noble Knob is that it was a fire lookout at one point, but at this point there isn't any remnants to be seen.  One old timer there told me that he had seen a wire on the slope below but I myself didn't see anything.  So after crossing the traverse you go up a couple easy switch backs to the top of Noble Knob which offers almost a 360 degree terestrial view.

The thing which struck me the most while up here was just how checkerboarded the surroundings were with clear cuts.  Not a ringind endorcement to be sure.  So after clearing my shoes of gavel I took off on the return.  The only difference with the return was that I opted to take the traverse all the way back to the parking lot.

So who is this hike good for?  Well I suppose from a return on investment perspective I guess this hike is pretty good, since you have a  realatively undisturbed time and get to enjoy the alpine environment without much work.  Also this might be a good area for mountain biking as for the most part the trails are very level.  As for water you won't need much - I only when though a couple mouthfuls.