Beautiful, fairly strenuous hike up through woods and meadows to a sweet reward - a fire tower with a 360° view of the Stuart Range, Teanaway Ridge, Chelan and Entiat Mountains. Apparently Mts. Rainier and Adams are also visible, but we didn't spot them.
We started out at 4:30 pm and made it to the fire tower in about an hour and a half. It's a stair step most of the way, with only a couple of level spots, though it's very pretty and mostly shaded all the way up, so never felt grueling. There are still some wildflowers blooming in the two meadow areas - Indian paintbrush, phlox, pretty blue flowers whose name escapes me, and many others. In the first meadowy area there was also lots of birdsong. It's very peaceful and pretty. About 2/3rds of the way up there's another lush riparian spot where Blue Creek flows downhill. There's also a cool ruin of a shack just off the path to the right.
Within a half mile we made it to the fork which gives a choice of the Teanaway Ridge trail (roughly north south) or Red Top (west). We headed up the Red Top trail and in another half a mile or so reached a wall of basalt with magnificent towers, atop which is perched Red Top Lookout. The path narrows as it winds up across the face of rock, and it's somewhat loose rocky and scrambly here, so we had to be super careful with the dog. The view at the top though - wow, worth every sore calf muscle! We were a little surprised at how much the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. It was probably 83° on the way up, dropping to about 60° at the top and very windy.
We spoke with a group of people who had parked at the Red Top parking lot down the other side, and who were heading back along the Teanaway Ridge trail, but otherwise saw no one else on the entire walk. Had a quick lunch on the steps of the fire tower (closed), took some photos, then headed back down as it was getting late. A note about the path down, something we didn't notice on the way up: just past the Teanaway Ridge/Red Top fork, there's another unnamed fork with a trail going off to the north. We almost took this one, but I remembered the dog leg turn in the path and we went back the right way. No idea where it leads, but it may have been our undoing, as it was about 7:00 pm by this time.
Made it down in about an hour. Saw some chukars and a black squirrel and a glimpse of a deer. Heard maybe two mosquitoes buzzing around my head, but that was it for bugs. 4 miles RT. Very enjoyable.
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