It had been five full days since our last hike, Mount Constitution out on the San Juan Islands, but in the meanwhile we had done quite a bit: three days poking around Seattle and checking out the standard Seattle sights including the Space Needle, the flagship REI store, the Pike Street Fish Market and a lunch out on Alki Island. My wife Beth lived here for many years, so she knew the area well, and we had fun taking in the sights. Me, this was my first extended stay in Seattle, not counting some short visits, one in 1982, another in 1997.

We were also attending the National Highpointers Convention in Puyallup, which took up a couple of the days. Once all that was over, we began our inland trek of the trip, with a side-trip into British Columbia, Canada. Beth wanted to visit the Harrison Hot Springs, one of her favorite spots from her time up here. We did that for an overnight, then worked our way back south. Our time in Canada was brief and the scenerey was wonderful. I was endlessly amused by their ketchup-flavored potato chips.

We re-entered the USA through the town of Osoyoos, planning to stay at the Lake Osoyoos State Park, but a major forest fire up in Canada was sending smoke our way, so we decided to drive into the town of Republic and get a hotel for the night. The hotel was quite a place: built on a hillside, the whole place was slowly coming apart and sliding down the slope. The toilet in our room leaned. There were defects in the floor where the slab dropped an inch or two in spots. I am surprised they kept it open. It stayed up for us that night, which is all we asked.

The next morning, we awoke not under a mound of hotel debris, so viewing that as a positive thing, we got moving toward today's hike, Copper Butte, the highpoint of the Kettle River Range and of Ferry County, and one of the more prominent mountains in the state. From Republic, we followed state route WA-20 east 20 miles, passing Sherman Pass, which at over 5,000 feet, is the highest paved road in the state of Washington. On the east side of the pass, evidence of a massive forest fire from 1988 was still present. Although there was a lot of new green growth, there were still many glades of dead, standing snags. We turned off the highway onto Albian Road (Forest Road 2030) and followed a good, well-graded dirt road north for 7.3 miles to the "Old Stage Road" trailhead, also known as the "Old State Road". This road was built around 1890 and was the first state-funded throughway in the state of Washington. We drove in a short way to the nice large parking area at the trailhead. It was about 9 a.m. and we had clear conditions, a bit cool, but nice. The smoky air was not a problem.

The route to the summit starts past the nice, well-constructed trailhead and gate. For the first half of the hike, about 1.5 miles, the route is along the old road (trail 75). It makes just one switchback turn and gains very gently through the forest. After just over a mile, we came into a section still bearing the scars of the 1988 burn. Ironically, these burned areas allow for better views down to the valleys below us and of the gentle, rounded summit above us. We passed through a simple wire gate along this section then shortly came to the main saddle, placing us just north of the summit. It had taken us less than 45 minutes to get here, with a gain of about 600 feet.

Continuing south very briefly along the road (trail 1), we then turned left onto the Kettle Crest Trail (trail 13). Steeper than the road, our pace slowed but we still made good time. We took our only extended break at the first of the two switchback turns. Shortly, we resumed our hike and achieved the elongated summit ridge. The summit was still a quarter-mile away but it was mostly flat walking along this stretch. Up here, not as heavily forested, it was mostly small stands of pine amid open grassy meadows and lots of rock piles (and cairns). We achieved the very top shortly and took our normal half-hour snack break here.

The views were quite pretty. To the east we had clear, crisp conditions, while to the west the views were slightly occluded by the smoky haze. The summit itself features literally over a dozen large rock cairns, as well as some evidence of a long-ago lookout up here. A rusted bed frame is not far from the summit rocks! We also noted a newly-placed plaque for a Tobias Buchanan, who apparently passed away in 2002. The climb had taken us under two hours, covering about 3 miles one way with about 1,700 feet of vertical gain. The only downisde were the incessant insects: bees, big flies and a little critter that would bite us everytime it landed on us. We got moving after a short while.

The hike down went quick. We found a nice compass just laying on the trail toward the bottom, so we picked it up for our collection. We were back to our car in just over an hour, for a total time out of about 4 hours (I think we were something like 3:57). We drove back to Republic for a lunch, then made our way south for a number of miles, eventually getting a hotel in Moses Lake. After a rest day, we tackled Strawberry Mountain in Grant County, Oregon next.