Photo Tour
Kettle Crest Hike & Road Tour
13/August/2009 14:03
The remains of Ryan’s Cabin about a quarter mile hike down and east of the Kettle Crest Trail in the Kettle River Range of Northeast Washington State.
Link to Kettle Crest Hike & Road Tour photo album.
There are times in life when you just need a good excuse to do something you really want to do, but for some reason you just can’t make the commitment. Up in Northeastern Washington State in the fall that is when the mighty hunters go “road hunting.” The reason for road hunting is you really don’t want to get anything from the hunt, you just want to drive around on back country roads and admire God’s handiwork.
If you move that October event forward to late July or August instead of road hunting you go prospecting for huckleberries. In this case if you find some - you don’t want to find too many, maybe enough for a pie, but you want to store that secret patch in your mind for the time you might really want to return and seriously pick some of the delicious berries on some perfect future date.
With the open ended desire to go prospecting for huckleberries last week my cousin Stan Miller and I got into my Saturn to test the waters, or the bushes in the Kettle River Range. The first turn off the paved Boulder - Deer Creek Road was onto the Bull Dog Cabin Road some 15 miles or so from the junction with US 395, heading north to the Canadian border. As far as my memory served me I could not remember being on that road. Way back there we came to sort of a summit that marked the divide between the north and south forks of Boulder Creek. The first picture of the camp at that summit in the photo album confirmed that new territory in my mind.
In the past access to this part of the backcountry was through the South Fork Boulder Creek Road, but a large slide about three miles up from the turn off the Boulder - Deer Creek Road closed this access about a decade ago and it has not been restored.
From this high point it was down hill to the remaining South Fork Road about 7 miles upstream from the slide. So far no significant huckleberries. Eventually the South Fork Road ends at a fork, one going up US Creek between US Mountain and Twin Sisters, the other becoming the Albian Hill Road that eventually joins SR 20 (Sherman Pass Scenic Byway). Now on familiar ground it was forward to the next prospecting spot, Ryan’s Cabin.
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