Arrived at the trailhead with a low clearance vehicle, the forest road on the way in was pretty easy, just a few minor pot-holes, but nothing bad. There is a stream that only a high clearance vehicle should drive across near the trailhead. We did not cross that stream, if you do cross that stream, follow the road to the right, there is a large parking lot by the trailhead and for whatever reason only 2 cars that crossed the stream were parked there, about 7 cars that crossed the stream were parked right by the stream.
When come across the stream the trail is towards the right, there is another trail straight ahead, but that is not the trail you want.
The hike had a fair amount of wildflowers especially Balsam Root and avalanche Lillies, if yellow flowers are your thing, this hike has a lot of them.
After hiking up the trail a bit you come to a fork, make sure if you are going up to Iron Bear Mountain you take the right up the Teannaway Ridge Trail, we followed the Iron Bear Creek trail for a little bit, lost about 400 feet in elevation before realizing we needed to turn around and then had to gain all that elevation back.
It was hot and the trail is pretty exposed so bring enough water, shade was pretty rare, but when we found it, we rested. It was also nice to rest in the shade where there was still some intermittent snow because it cooled us down.
There were some small snowfields, but nothing that required microspikes, just a good pair of boots and trekking polls made it easy, my guess is in 2 weeks there will be basically no snow left.
The views at the top were totally worth it though. Clear day, great view of Mount Rainier and Mount Stewart and we lucked out and the sun dipped behind a cloud and it cooled down.
Normally I am most worried about hiking downhill (injured my knee 4 years ago) but it was pretty easy on the knees down, but I had trekking polls.
I absolutely recommend this hike. It was just the right amount of challenge where you have to push yourself to get to the top, but not impossible and very pretty the whole way.
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