Iron Bear - Teanaway Ridge, Jester Mountain — Friday, May. 28, 2021

Finally got out to Iron Bear to see what all of the fuss was about. It’s pretty, but I would probably leave this hike mostly to casual hikers. It’s a nice ridge, but has gotten a lot of press lately so it’s really busy (even for a midday Friday) and quite frankly I liked Tronsen Ridge better.

Most of the balsamroot is pretty ragged right now. The paintbrush and pentsemon are the stars of the show with a few trillium here and there and some avalanche lilies are starting to come in near the Iron Bear summit. But if you’re looking for wildflowers, it’s pretty sparse right now.

The best view in the house of the Teanaway, south Salmon la Sac, and Stuart Range is down the northwest ridge in my not so humble opinion 😜. There’s a low impact path to the right of the trees down the ridge. If you’re going over anything but rock, you’ve gone the wrong way.

Getting down to Jester requires some really rudimentary route finding and snow travel, but the snow was super consolidated and the route finding was super basic. There’s an easy cross-country route using game trails that you can take up the southwest ridge just after getting on the right fork of the County Line Trail and there’s another low impact way to the west of the summit. It was so much nicer than the annoying adjacent ridge—Bearjack Ridge -.- (I side eyed it on the way up to Iron Bear). There isn’t much of a view right now since everything is brown and melted out over by Wenatchee, but it might be nice other times of the year (say, larch season? When Mission Ridge has more snow?) or if visibility was a bit better.

A fun little leg stretcher that’s good for casual hikers or if one’s caught for time.

Note: social distancing on this trail is difficult as most of the tread is one hiker wide. If you want to see less crowds and/or wander further, try one of the other access points instead of the one from Blewett Pass.