Our trail route was Bear Ridge E3, West Tibbetts Creek E10, Tibbetts Marsh N9, up to the Mine Shaft, Cougar Pass N8, Anti-Aircraft Ridge N7, Shangri La E1, back to Bear Ridge. It is a very nice, easy loop about 6.5 miles round trip. There are many old blowdowns on the Bear Ridge section but these are easily stepped over. Anti-Aircraft Peak features a nice lawn, picnic tables and a gorgeous view over Lake Sammamish to Mt. Baker. Our trailhead is easy to miss. It is a small roadside patch with space for 2 cars right off the Renton-Issaquah Road #900.

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.

If you're looking for an easy flat stroll through the woods then the Sky Country portion of Cougar Mountain park is a great choice. The area between Anti Aircraft Peak and Wilderness peak is a gently undulating plateau with lots of small creeks and marshy areas. We started at the Sky Country Trailhead which was an old Nike Missile Defense base in WW2. A map is nice to have since the maze of trails and looping opportunities are bit mind boggling. The Clay Pit has undergone a major transformation in 2015. The Clay Pit was a huge open mine used for harvesting clay for the Mutual Material brick plant in Newcastle since the early '70s. It's always been a nasty industrial looking eyesore in the middle of Cougar Mtn Park. Recently Mutual Materials closed down and sold its brick plant to the Avalon development company (currently under construction with 900 residences planned!). Since the mining has stopped, King Co has apparently undertaken a big rehabilitation project to help the Clay Pit revert back to nature. It looks like they have sculpted the landscape, put down top soil and hydro seeded the entire area. It already looks much better than ever. The small lake at the east end of the pit is now growing Cattails for the first time. The late Harvey Manning (founder of Issaquah Alps Trails Club) had written about his dream of The Clay Pit some day being allowed to revert back to nature in more than a few of his manuscripts. I always thought that what he wrote was very captivating and now thanks to King Co Parks, it is finally beginning to come true: "The pit itself will become one of the park's crowning glories. In the final manipulations of the terrain, islets and peninsulas can be fashioned to serve as nesting sanctuaries; plank walkways and platforms might be built for non-intrusive viewing. The very first spring the mallards will be nesting, by the next year the frogs and newts and muskrats and their ilk will establish themselves, and before long all the area's resident and migratory wildfowl will put it on their itineraries. Soon the walker will have to beware of the nest-guarding redwing blackbird. In a couple of decades the cottonwoods that will grow tall from the shores will catch the attention of the great blue herons, who will establish a heronry: to give the seclusion they want, their chosen sanctuary will be protected from public entry, a viewing site established so visitors can unobtrusively observe the February-to-June courtship, mating, nesting, and rearing of the young."

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.

This was a wet hike on which I tried to follow the "Black Bear" Loop but missed about 2 miles of the loop (guessing I should have gone down to Coal Creek Falls and then back up to the "Old Man Trail". Lots of puddles on the trails and some mud (much more in the way of puddles). Water Proof Boots and rain gear were required but my pants were soaked after the 3 mile loop I did so this is a hike better done during a dry spell. The big surprise to me was that the lot at Sky Country Trail Head had quite a few cars and there were runners, dog walkers and hikers out. While a soggy hike on Monday, its still nice to get out in the woods and enjoy a Washington Winter. Note: Big Surprise for me was the Beaver Dam on the East Fork of Coal Creek (off Clay Pit Road)! Wow what a magnificent piece of engineering.