I couldn’t make it to the trailhead in my Mazda 3 due to many large trenches across the road that varied from about 6-9 inches deep (see photo 4 for a pretty bad one).  I had to ditch my car and hoof it up the forest road to the real trailhead, and this added about 1000 vertical feet to my hike (ugh!).  Once at the trailhead (1.5 hours later), I found that the trail became very faint and hard to follow. After the first half mile or so, it does become more conspicuous and I was able to just follow the ridgeline most of the time. There are two false summits, and the actual summit does not have very good views as it is mostly blocked in by the trees. The entire trail is through a burned out area from the Maple Fire a few years ago, and there are no opportunities to fill up on water along the trail, so bring plenty. This hike is definitely more strenuous than I expected from looking at the topo map, but it is worth it for the great views of Lena Lake and The Brothers across the Hamma Hamma River Valley. As a bonus, there are lots of rhododendrons that are beginning to bloom right now along the upper forest road. I didn’t see anybody else the whole day, which was actually pretty nice. I would recommend this hike for folks looking for a good workout with views, and who are comfortable finding their own way in the wilderness. Be sure to drive a high clearance 4x4 vehicle if you got one, and make sure you are back before dark since the trail is hard enough to see/follow during the day.

Pershing trail to summit Mt Pershing - from Jefferson Creek and FR 2401

Park here (47.5432981, -123.2238374)

Trail starts here (47.545078, -123.228973)

Definitely use this trail up as compared to the massive bushwhack from the Hamma Hamma side. Can take a regular car to within 1/2 mile of trailhead, which is an opening in the shrubs.  Trucks can get to the actual trailhead.  FR 2401 is open (as of Oct 2020) from N Jorsted Creek Road but can also take the longer way by using Hamma Hamma watershed.  Google maps works great to get here from either direction.  

Pershing trail is definitely a mountaineers route with route-finding capabilities required but the prettiness cannot be beat.  House sized boulders covered in moss, tunnels, old growth trees, waterfalls on thousand-foot rock bands on the northern slope of Mt Washington and one really odd old growth douglas fir tree.  The trail is very steep with root pulling in some locations.  After the trail goes west, it goes mostly straight up.

Re-taped trail up (surveyors tape) to avalanche areas up to where trees ran out so the Pershing trail should be reasonably straight forward. Fourth class scramble to very exposed ridge that can be walked if you've got the nerve.  Most new climbers may struggle here due to exposure on low-risk, high-consequence terrain. 20m rope would be more than sufficient. For average mountaineer, not a problem.

For route GPX file, see Peakbagger link below.

The forest service removed the closure for this area.  However, Road 2421 to the trailheads is closed for logging.  It seems to be ok to hike it on a weekend when no work is happening.  We saw a Forest Service truck come in who just waved as they passed.  The road is in decent shape to hike.  We came in from Elk Lake because it saved us walking the road for two miles and was more interesting.  That trail's tread is faint in places and some obstacles but definitely passable - some work has recently been done on one section.

The lower trailhead was impossible to locate as it seems to be in the logged out area.  The medium trailhead was visible, but the trail disappeared in a few feet so we opted for the road even though it was longer.  Upper trailhead is quite tough to spot.  It is after the gate and a bit before the solar panel.  It's in bad shape.  Lots of downfall, the trail is sloughing off in contouring areas, and completely overgrown.  We decided about 1/3 mile up it that it was going to take longer than we wanted given other plans for the weekend.  We did 9.5 miles and 2500 gain and were perhaps 650 feet below the lookout site which was our aim.  I hated to give up as this was to be #197 lookout sites or structures, but we had declared no more bushwhacking this summer,

This trail is quickly going to be totally gone without some major effort.

The Elk Lakes trail might open again as well as the Jefferson Ridge trail and the Jefferson Lakes trail that also got wiped out in the 2018 maple fire. The fire started when tree thieves wanted to chop down a Big-Leaf maple tree. Tree thieves are basically people that go out on a hiking trail or road and look for a big tree to chop down for lumber. This Big-Leaf maple was worth about 6,000 dollars in lumber. But these tree thieves ran into a big problem. There was a colony of bees that made its home in the tree. So the tree thieves thought of covering it with wasp spray but that did little to stop the swarming bees. So they had another idea. They were going to cover the beehive with gasoline and light it on fire. They'd planned to put out the fire with water bottles. So they lit the gas covered beehive on fire and it went out of control. The fire burned thousands of acres and it took two days to control. The fire was 4.5 billion dollars to extinguish. It took billions of dollars to extinguish it. Not a few water bottles for a few bucks. They tracked down the people who started the fire days later. They are still in jail today. It's very sad what these tree thieves had done to all the wildlife. So many animals died in the flames of the 2018 maple fire.

Road closed and also road goes through active logging operations. Recommend going on weekends when operations aren't in progress
Snow at 3500ft