10.35 miles of hiking • 3750' elevation gain •
We started at the Bridge Creek trailhead, got on the PCT and immediately ran into a through hiker who needed to finish up in two days so he could catch his plane back home. Hopefully, it worked out for him! After a few different junctions, we reached the spur trail to the former lookout, which is no longer maintained. The brush (including the devil's club) had mostly died off, so we had no problems with the trail. We could see how it would be pretty overgrown in the summer. On the ridge climb up, there were some fallen trees, but nothing bad at all. Once you reach the rocky meadow area, the trail becomes more faint. We were able to follow it though. Cairns were also here and there to help mark the route. We reached the lookout area and really enjoyed the 360 views! Most of the larches had lost their needles, but there were still some golden ones in the meadow below Stiletto Peak, which is over a bit from where the lookout sat. We could see the route over to Stiletto Lake, which we visited on an abandoned trail from Twisp Pass last year. We chatted about coming back someday to do a loop through the lookout site to the lake and Copper Pass. This is a great a hike, that apparently does not get much use any more. The two hiking books we had (the old 100 hikes guide and the current day hiking North Cascades) both said that the round trip mileage would be about 14 miles. Our GPS had significantly less mileage - around 10 miles, which seemed way more accurate to us. Overall, we had a blast, all by ourselves, on a great old trail.
