You can really wander at Cougar Mountain, and that's what I did today for my trail run. Ended up touching quite a few of the trails over the course of 7.5 miles and wound up with a total gain of almost 1,200 feet. Incredible area for trail running, and the majority of other people I saw out today were also running. Didn't bump into a ton of people until the Cave Hole Trail. I decided to make up my route as I went along today, and for the most part it turned out great. The only regret I have is using the Belevedere Loop, which spit me out into the street below the park entrance, so I had to run the last half mile up the road to get back to my car. Other than that, great network of trails to explore. There was a bit of mud in places that you'll need to leap over or circumvent, but none of these patches was too nasty. Highly recommend this park for trail running--you can really get some varied terrain.

They are doing upgrades to the Wilderness Creek Trail, replacing the bridges. At the junction 1/2 mile up with the Wilderness Cliffs Trail, the Wilderness Creek Trail is closed until 1/22 because they are replacing a bridge on the trail. The Wilderness Creek Trail is closed from that junction all the way up to the Shy Bear Pass 5-way trail junction. The Wilderness Cliffs Trail is currently the only way to the top of Wilderness Peak from Wilderness Creek TH. We hiked that up to the anti-climatic top. I found it silly to have a summit register up there. We then hiked down to Shy Bear Pass, down Shy Bear Trail to Freds RR Trail, then turned onto East Fork Trail, which is cool with the old bricks on the trail. It must've been an old brick road a long time ago. We hiked this trail to the mine shaft and wow that is awesome. Huge deep cave-like hole in the ground (covered by a locked grate, of course). The hole was much larger than I was expecting. Very nice historic attraction. We then passed by the old clay pit (now more of an open grass field), down to Cougar Pass, then hiked up Anti-Aircraft Ridge Trail to the Anti-Aircraft TH, where we enjoyed the view of Lake Sammamish (no Baker today). We then walked the road to the top of Anti-Aircraft Peak, then found the trail back to Lost Beagle Trail, and hiked that down to Klondike Swamp Trail. We hiked that back out to Clay Pit Road, crossed the road and returned to the Freds RR Trail, which we hiked back out to Shy Bear Pass. Now this is where I planned to hike down the Wilderness Creek Trail. But since it was closed, we had no choice but to hike back up 200 or so feet up and over Wilderness Peak, which also added an extra 3/4 miles to the hike. So the trail construction was an inconvenient obstacle on our hike back out but wasn't too big of a deal in the end. Nice 10 mile/2000ft. gain hike that covered most of the eastern half of Cougar Mountain.

Great little hike with not too much elevation gain. It took us just a bit over 2 hours to do this ~5mi hike. Going through Shy Bear Marsh was gorgeous. I loved the little boardwalk that was built over it. This was my first time hiking around Cougar Mountain, and I can't wait to come back and check out the other trails! We loved seeing all the old mining structures.

We started our last hike for 2015 with a loop trip on Cougar Mountain from Red Town. Headed out on the Wildside Trail over to the Indian Trail past Far Country Falls. On the Wildside trail we hiked past "Iron Springs". We turned off on the Shy Bear Trail and hiked up to the Far Country Viewpoint. The viewpoint has a nice log bench which we used for lunch. With the freezing clear weather hot soup and cocoa tasted great. We could see all the way over to the southern part of the Olympic Mountains. While eating, several other hiking parties came by. If we had not told them about the view over to the Olympics, they would have just hiked along without seeing it. After lunch we continued on the Shy Bear Trail. Past the junction with the Deceiver Trail we came to some walkway bridges across a swampy area of Shy Bear Creek. The first section had no metal grating and is covered in ice, so watch your step. At the end of the walkway we came upon a decorated Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Someone had packed in decorations to brighten up the hike. Then it was up over a ridge and back down to cross a fork of Cabbage Creek, then up again to Fred's Rail Road Trail. We headed north a short distance to the Quarry Trail and hiked downhill along Coal Creek. Met a few people going up with their dogs. Once down to the Indian Trail we followed the Red Town Trail (old road) back to the parking lot to complete our 6.6 mile loop hike. Made for a nice hike on the last day of 2015. All the trail we hiked are in good shape and any muddy areas are frozen over.