Remote unique beautiful.  This hike is one of the 100 Classic Hikes in the state of Washington - but in that great book, it is described as a 17 mile through hike, starting 5 miles further east and heading to highway 21.  I had done the west section last year so this was my attempt at the east.    

I highly recommend this day trip:  Starting at the Bear Pot trailhead, hike .7 easy well-maintained miles, turn west/right and hike 4 challenging (around 40 blow downs) miles to the "old jeep track" (include a side trip to the spectacular Thirteenmile Mountain), and then hike 3.5 fantastic ridgeline miles to the Cougar trailhead - all very well maintained.  Turn around and return to your start making for a 16 mile day.  A long day with no water source, but what a tradeoff for seeing no recent footprints except for deer.

NOTE: thank you WTA for the directions as I had also googled directions which included a non-existent road which is kinda scary:)

For the times that we live in, with a need to physically distance ourselves for everyone’s wellbeing; we have hikes like this. The most recent registrants at the trail head were hikers two weeks ago. Our day was gloriously filled with flowers, was mostly sunny, and need I mention it, we didn’t see a soul.

Bear Pot is a primitive camp site with a fire ring and not much else. We arrived early the night before and spent our evening listening to squirrels and evening bird calls. Mosquitos were an annoyance but a smoky fire or bug-spray will keep them at bay.

What is remarkable here is the diversity of this trail. There is an accumulative 1800’ of elevation gain as you roll through the Okanogan Highlands. Lodge Pole pine forest one moment, then a mature, park-like fir/ponderosa forest the next, and lastly sub-alpine rocky hillsides smothered in flowers. An old sheep herder’s cabin was fun to visit as was the now-gone fire lookout summit.

The trail is remarkably easy to follow but don’t wear your white tennis shoes. If the weather has been wet at all (as it has been), the trail turns into a narrow stream in many places. Moose and deer traffic make the trail full of wet holes. Moose, you say? Yes, moose. We didn’t physically see any (they were distancing) but their tracks are very evident and one moose’s crashing through the brush and into water was unmistakable.

The flowers are fantastic. We identified ~60 specimens.

A note to navigators should you hike this trail. Several map sources, GaiaGPS and Day Hiking Eastern Washington, by Romano and Landers among others, show the trail after the cabin in the incorrect place. This isn’t a problem (as the trail is easy to follow) so long as you turn west (right) onto the Thirteen Mile trail when you reach it. The left fork goes eastward.

We camped at Bear Pot, named for bears who would hang out in the boggy pond near by. That's also the trailhead. We made it past the cabin, missed the mine adit mentioned in the guidebook, and finally the very easy scramble to the summit. It's strange there is no evidence of trail to the lookout site, with some lumber, eyelets and concrete blocks the only human markings on the landscape a couple tenths of a mile above the trail. We found the mine adit on the way back, an easier direction to notice it below the trail, but ya gotta look sharp.

A pleasant stroll in the late afternoon. Bear and moose scat, but no animals spotted.  (Hiking with 2 dogs can have that effect, but the scat was not fresh.) sundhine on the lupine was magnificent. Water at Bear Pot was low and the stream was flowing. 

Not many persons around on a mid-week afternoon. 

Road - deep 8 inch ruts from water runoff - but snowfree.

Trail: Small lake encompasses a couple hundred feet of trail near the start of the trail - bushwhacked around to the east but got a couple tics doing so.

Otherwise there are several blowdown, most fairly easy to navigate.

Mosquitoes were out in force near the TH but most of the rest of the trail was fairly bug free.