I felt carefree and content as I climbed up to Copper Butte that morning. Morning Star and Cookie Monster had left before me, and I passed them on the way up. Unfortunately, Morning Star was having serious pain in his knee, which forced him to slow his pace.

I took a long break at the junk pile, admiring the infinite view to the east and waiting for C.M. and M.S. to make it up to the top. They hung out for a few minutes. I watched them leave, and continued to sit there for another hour or so.

The rest of the hiking day flew by – I had only 12 miles to highway 20, where I would hitch west into Republic. This section of the Kettle Crest Trail was filled with wildflower meadows and scenic views to the east. I passed Cookie Monster and Morning Star while they were trudging down a hill. Downhills were especially hard on Morning Star’s knee.

(That's a quarter next to the mushroom, for scale)

I ate lunch at a boulder outcropping next to a small piped spring (C454). I gravity-filtered some water there while I climbed up the side of the ridge to find a spot to poop.


It was well into the afternoon when I made it to Sherman Pass and started hitching. I watched a team of cyclists who were doing a supported ride across the country climb up the hill one-by-one as I waited for a car to come through.

It took about an hour and a half to get a ride, with probably 30-40 cars passing by in that time, and a lot of semis. I caught a ride with a woman with three kids in the backseat. She was really friendly, and talked to me about her job as a DNR wilderness firefighter for the entire 40-minute drive into Republic. Unlike most people I had encountered so far, she knew a lot about the PNT and had picked up other PNT hikers before.

The driver asked me where I was staying in town, and I said I was hoping to just camp out somewhere. So when we pulled up into Republic, she wrote down the address of her house and told me I could camp in her backyard, even though she wouldn’t be there. I thanked her profusely, got out of the car, and headed straight for the post office.

Republic immediately struck me as a creepy little town. It had a very Gold Rush vibe, and I think they were trying to lean into it, but the result made me feel uneasy.

At the post office, I retrieved the package containing everything I had ordered in Metaline Falls, plus the new camera that my mom sent. My next task was to fix my phon screen, so I walked down Republic’s main street to the library, where I watched a YouTube repair video while I used the phone repair kit I had ordered to pry off my old screen and install the new one. I was actually missing the double-sided tape that I needed to keep the new screen properly in place. But it seemed Good Enough to me.

I bought a sandwich from a little health food store in town and ate it on the curb as the sun started setting. With my newly-functional phone screen, I looked up directions to the address that my driver had left for me, and headed over to Adams Street to camp in this random person’s backyard.

When I got there, I realized I had no water, so I had to walk back into town to find some. It was dark, and there was this creepy guy sitting outside of a bar with a big German Shepherd. They both stared at me as I walked past.

I found a water spigot at a tiny park in town and filled up a few liters. As I was screwing the caps back on, the guy with the German Shepherd came out of nowhere. He stopped in front of me and said, “Hey, pet the dog.” I panicked, and turned the other direction and walked away from him without saying anything. He must have run around the block the other way – he popped out around the next corner and said, “What are you afraid of? She doesn’t bite. Pet the dog.”

I was seriously freaked out at that point, and I broke into a full run (with my backpack on). The guy still followed me, but at a slower pace. I stopped outside of a bar where a bunch of people were hanging out outside, and the guy came up to me with his dog, who was now bristling and growling. I yelled at him, “Why are you following me?” He immediately turned around and walked the other direction, and I disappeared into the night as fast as I could so that he wouldn’t find me.

I had a restless night, too anxious and hot to get enough sleep. I couldn’t wait to get out of this extremely cursed town.