From the lower trailhead, follow the forest road uphill, taking a right at the first fork. There is a sign for trail #236 there, but the arrow has been blasted away. Taking a left follows an old overgrown logging road eastwards through an old clearcut now overgrown with larch saplings. It eventually ends and you’d have to bushwhack through the dense larch growth uphill towards the ridge, eventually emerging onto the forest road again. You could follow that east, but it also will end where the clearcut ends and a steep ATV trail heads uphill to the ridge where the single-track is. There are some nice views along this trail, but nothing better really than what you’ll get at the peak anyway and thus we don’t recommend this route.

Instead, at that first sign with the blasted-away arrow continue right and uphill, eventually coming to another fork where you’ll take a left (sign and arrow here are intact). Shortly after you’ll end up at the official trailhead for trail #236. From this point it is one mile to the peak on a single-track that moves along the spine of the ridge through a clearcut densely  covered with larch saplings. After a third of a mile the clearcut ends and the single-track enters a mature larch, pine, and spruce forest carpeted thickly with beargrass. The last quarter-mile gets a bit steeper as you emerge onto the bare granite slabs that make up Cooks Peak. A dilapidated log cabin that served the crew manning the lookout tower is slightly southwest of the peak. At the very top of Cooks Peak you’ll find the concrete footings and some cabling of the old lookout tower and a geocache. In theory, the views here are phenomenal, but on this day the haze from wildfires in Canada put the kibosh on that.