We started at 9 mile and hiked most of the way to mavaric saddle. About 100 blowdowns from 9 mile to youngs creek have been freshly cleared, leaving 4 or 5 big ones. From youngs creek to cougar creek is cleared just enough to duck through, but it is now walkable with about 100 blowdowns. Trail tward maveric saddle from cougar creek gets progressively better as you leave the burn area. Two small washouts between the two bridges over the mad river, and water over trail in places. Lots of brush growing over trail throughout. Needs a work party.

Saturday, Jim and I planned to head out rain or shine for a fall mountain hike. Given the forecast, we decided on an east slope location, and decided that a hike up in the Entiat area off the recently opened Chiwawa Road would be a good option. We still packed for rain, even though we were hoping that by heading east we would enter the rain shadow. Our selected destination was Cougar Mountain, a former lookout site in the Entiat Mountains.

After a few wrong turns and some backtracking, we found the series of logging/forest service roads that took us to the Maverick Saddle trailhead. The hiking guide mentions that parts of the road are rough, and that is true, but it is no Middle Fork Road. Anyone who has driven that miserable stretch of road will not complain about any part of this drive.

Our hike began up the Mad River Trail. We were greeted at the trailhead by several motorcycles, but fortunately for us they were traveling a different trail. This series of trails is open to all user groups (except ATVs). We traveled the Mad River Trail for about 1.3 miles and then we took the Jimmy Creek trail for about 3 miles. Snow cover started at about 5,000 feet elevation, with about 3 or 4 inches of fresh accumulation, which made our travel much slower than it would have otherwise been on more bare trail. There were two easily stepped over blowdown across the trail. In the summit area, we took a half mile side trip to the former Cougar Mountain Lookout site at 6701 feet. There are a few pieces of rebar, pieces of a foundation and other signs of the former lookout still present, although it was hard to tell through all the fresh snow. We estimate that there was about 5 inches of new snow at the summit. It was windy, snowing, and essentially socked in on top – not exactly the best conditions for admiring what must have been some nice views. We’ll have to come back when we can see.

Jim noted that we could make a nice loop trip by descending a different series of trails, and always ones to take the option of a nice loop to see some different terrain, we opted to make a loop. We descended the Whistling Pig Creek trail to the Mad River Trail and closed the loop where the Mad River Trail met the Jimmy Creek Trail, and then hiked back to the trailhead on bare, wet muddy trail to Maverick Saddle. The trails were in decent shape, and showed evidence that they were being currently worked on. New concrete foundation was being installed in the more heavily motorcycle traveled areas. We only encountered one party of motorcyclers on the trail who went very courteously past us, each new person letting us know how many more were behind them. The last two miles seemed to go on and on, but we finally reached the trailhead, clean dry cotton, and high tailed it to the 59er diner just in time for the dinner rush. It was still raining at the trailhead.

Stats: 12.5 miles, 2700 feet gained, 3.5 hours up, 3.2 hours down.

As my car has rather low ground clearance I decided to take the long approach to the trailhead rather than the more direct route taking road 6100. We drove eagle creek road from Leavenworth to the end and took a left onto the FS road (7500 I believe) for six miles. The dirt road is in good condition, but very dusty. At the end of the road the road splits and you take a left onto road 5200 for many miles until the end. There are several dips in the road and my car bottomed out a couple times both in and out. The road is very narrow for the last five miles or so and I don't know what I would do if we had encountered a car coming from the opposite direction. At the end of the road is a large parking area and a narrow road on the right side that takes you down to another parking area and the TH for mad river.

The trail is very well maintained and well built, but what must have been $$$ was spent for the benefit of motorcyclists. The trail system is marked as being closed for the season but it was apparent from the fresh tracks that they have been using it anyway tearing up some sections of the trail. We were originally going to go up the Jimmy creek trail but could not find it. Apparently it is located near the rock field a couple hundred yards from the mad river bridge.

As I had my kids with me we made it an easy day the first day and hiked up to the blue meadow. It really is not much of a meadow and there really are no camp spots. It would have been better to take the trail up to whistling pig and take the nice camp spot at the intersection with tommy ridge/whistling pig trail. Bugs are not bad, mozzies only and they are not too vicious but I did get several bites, but I also used no DEET.

The next day we hiked down from Blue Creek Meadow and took the trail up to the whistling pig intersection. We continued on going to Cougar mountain. At the intersection of the main trail with the cougar mountain summit trail is a very nice camp site just off the summit trail. We took some time to hike up the summit trail and get some great views of the mountain ranges on the west and east side. My 8 year old had fun taking pictures of us and the scenery. This would have been a good place to stop but we continued on.

Not far beyond this is the interestion for the cougar mountain trail and the split for the Jimmy Creek trail and the unmaintained (NM) trail. We searched for the Jimmy Creek trail using the GPS to measure the distance to the TH. The sign at the fork says 1/4 mile and the green trail map says .3 mile but nowhere could I find the trail and there was no sign for it. We took the NM trail; note, I should have backed up to the intersection and just SE to try and hit the trail somewhere down the mountain. We continued down the NM trail up the the next hill top (elev ~6358') and that is where I lost the trail. So we bushwacked down the mountain making for the mad river trail. For the most part it was easy and not overgrown at all. Some places were very steep. We eventually rejoined the NM trail and came down to the mad river trail 1.9 miles from the mad river bridge. This made the trip longer than anticipated. Not far from the intersection we broke out the snacks and I left my ziploc bag of my sweetwater filter accessories along the side of the trail, which I did not discover until we went to get water under the mad river bridge. We managed to get back to the TH at 6pm. 8.7 miles in one day was more than I thought the kids could handle but with lots of Nature's Vallye granola bars, some corn nuts, water and a promise of Dairy Queen blizzard's the trip went quite well.

Overall I enjoyed the trip, but would never want to do it once it is opened to the cyclists. The 1.5 hours it took both ways from Leavenworth does not really make worth going. Perhaps if I could have taken the short road from near lake Wenatchee it would have been better, but my car could never make that road.