The trail is in good shape with fairly recent maintenance and easy enough to follow. There are some muddy spots and mosquitoes were sometimes bad. The basin is a nice place to camp. We followed the creek up from the basin and then traversed to the ridge following a scree chute but did not find all that great vantage because of the trees on the other side, probably better to stay closer to Sloan for best views. The descent felt very steep back to the basin.

The 3 miles from the Mountain Loop Highway are on fairly course gravel, fun for all wheel drive but rough for a low sedan. We drove back making the full loop of the Mountain Loop Highway, which is in great shape.

http://bultemeier.posterous.com/bedal-basin-hike

Our Boy Scout troop, 523 from Kirkland, had intended a three day trip starting with a hike up 705 to camp at the south end of Bedal creek. The second day was to be following down 705, connecting with 4096 and moving over to 647 to end at Goat Lake for the second night. The last day was to be down the Elliot Creek trail to 4096 and back to the car.

The best plans of mice and men (or Boy Scouts) however were stymied by conditions. We got almost to the trail head of 705, about 300 yards from it there is a large tree blown down across the road. We parked up the hill on a wide spot on the road, shouldered our packs and headed down the road to being the hike. We made it about half a mile along the trail, through some over growth, to Bedal creek itself and it was running high and fast. We scouted up and down the banks but could not find a safe place to cross. No bother, we are flexible so we headed back up the trail to the car and moved on to the trail head for Goat Lake.

At the trail head there was a report that said that there is a dangerous slide on the Elliott Creek trial (the lower trail) and that it is impassable. No bother, we took the upper trial, #647 and made it to the lake in about 3.5 hours with a lunch break in the middle. The trail is in great shape. There is some significant blow down near the falls just before you hit the switch backs and the steeper part but you can climb over and through it without too much trouble. We did see about five places with bear scat on the trail but much of it was old.

We got to the lake on Friday afternoon and setup camp. There was one other party there, a couple of guys that were fishing but other than that we had the place to ourselves. The lake is clear of ice except for some chunks at the south end and it is gorgeous! We saw more bear scat at the camp, some near one of the toilets that was probably no more than a day old.

On Saturday morning we got up too late :-) and decided that a quick hike around the lake was in order seeing as we could no longer plan to make the trip between Goat lake and Bedal creek. We thankfully packed lunch and took off for what we thought would be a 2 or 3 hour hike. Note to self, there is no trail around the lake, be ready to bushwack through thickets and forests of devils club, scramble boulder fields, and traverse snow covered waterfalls. Two or three hours ended up being seven, but it was worth it. The south end of the lake still has some ice and the meadow is covered in snow. We saw tons of trillium and the forget-me-nots where just coming out. More flowers no doubt will be out in the next couple of weeks.

While on the hike we saw very fresh bear scat and a few paw prints in the snow. My guess is that they were about 8 – 10 inches across. At the south end of the lake, after we finished lunch and started hiking again we saw a bear on the hill side. He/She was good sized and was feasting on the green stuff on the hill about a quarter of a mile away from us. She/He looked at us but continued grazing on the hill. After gawking at him/her for a little while and getting some pictures, we moved on in the opposite direction. We got back to camp around four hours later at 5:00pm. I would highly recommend this day hike but be ready for the bushwacking, bring food and extra water or a pump. We had a great time.

Camp filled up while we were away, with about a dozen parties joining us in the local paradise, one couple not getting in until 7:00pm.

Sunday morning we woke up to a light drizzle so we had packed up our tents, had a quick breakfast under the dining fly, pack the rest of our gear, double checked and swept the camp for trash and then beat feet back down the trail. The return trip down took two hours and twenty two minutes.

On the drive back we headed south to see how far we could make it on the Mountain Loop Highway but we hit snow before Barlow pass. We turned around and had lunch at the Burger Barn in Darrington and then got back to Kirkland around 4:00 in the afternoon.

It was a great trip.