Old Wagon Trail to Bridge Creek Camp

This is a 5.3-mile one-way, point-to-point hike from High Bridge to Bridge Creek Camp, with about 700 feet of reported elevation gain. It rolls through forest rather than climbing to a summit; allow about three hours each way. The route ends at a backcountry camp, so a same-trail day outing is 10.6 miles round trip. Overnight stays require a limited backcountry permit.

Begin behind the corral at the historic High Bridge Ranger Station. The first 1.3 miles is also called the Howard Lake Trail and serves as the access route to Howard Lake and the McGregor Mountain junction. Beyond that junction, the path meanders through Douglas-fir with little elevation change. A signed spur heads west to Stehekin Valley Road; it is part of a separate, shorter road-return option rather than the mapped walk to Bridge Creek.

The route crosses the Shady Fire burn, where blackened snags stand among open and closed patches of forest. Fireweed brightens the openings and can attract rufous hummingbirds; downy woodpeckers forage among the snags. Some standing burned trees can be unstable in strong wind or heavy rain. Farther along, look for western red cedars with trunks six to eight feet across. A person beside one of the largest trunks gives the grove a useful sense of scale.

The trail follows the general line of an 1890s haul road, though only faint traces of the wagon route remain. Floods in 2003 removed sections of the valley road, leaving this trail as the maintained route from Stehekin to Bridge Creek. At about 4.5 miles, a spur drops toward Shady Camp and the Stehekin River; Bridge Creek Camp is about 0.8 mile farther. Its flat benches formed from sediment at the meeting of Bridge Creek and the Stehekin River, and the site once served an 1890s mining and trapping settlement.