Fourth of July Mountain — Saturday, Sep. 19, 2026

I was out of town a lot the last few months, so I hadn’t been able to hike in Washington this summer. But I didn’t want to go the whole summer without hiking in WA, so we headed over to hike Fourth of July Mountain while spending the weekend in Chelan. We arrived at the trailhead shortly before 10 AM, and only one other car was parked there. The trailhead doesn’t have many parking spots — just a few along the side of the forest road. The road to the trailhead is paved almost the whole way, except for the last stretch of road. The unpaved section of road was a bit bumpy, but it still seemed drivable in any type of car.

We started up the trail, first crossing Lower Antilon Lake’s dam before steeply climbing above the valley. We hiked through a small patch of trees before turning to hike south, away from the lake. It was a smoky morning, but the smoke seemed to be worse closest to the trailhead. The smoke had sunk low in the valley, so the smoke wasn’t as bad once we climbed out of the valley.

The trail turned to the west before the final ascent to the summit, and there was a brief stretch where the trail flattened out. However, most of the trail was steep and completely exposed to the sun. Temperatures were in the low 70s and the UV wasn’t very high when we hiked, so hiking on the exposed trail was manageable.

The steepest part of the trail was when the trail turned north to climb to the top of Fourth of July Mountain. We stopped every once in a while to drink water and admire the views to the south, especially when we encountered the occasional tree that provided some shade to rest in. The low-lying smoke obscured our view of Manson and the southern end of Lake Chelan, but it was still beautiful to see the small lakes and desert hills.

When we arrived at the top, there was a grove of pine trees that blocked most of the view of Lake Chelan. We hiked down a short path to the other side of the grove to the main viewpoint, where there were unobstructed views of Lake Chelan and the surrounding mountains. It was remarkable to see how high we had climbed above the lake. There was more smoke blocking our view of the mountains further up the lake, but there were still plenty of beautiful views to admire.

We took some photos of the scenery, rested in the shade, and made our way back down the mountain. The trail was dusty and slick in places, so we descended cautiously. It took us a little bit less than an hour to hike to the top, and around 45 minutes to hike back down. We only encountered one other hiker, so we otherwise had the trail to ourselves. This hike might be best during spring wildflower season, but we still enjoyed it on a beautiful late-summer morning.