Terrence's WTA Trip Report:
We are the Mountain Goats, Terrence (13) and Nathan (16) and today we headed up to the infrequently summited Mount Kent by way of the McClellan Butte Trail, which is the first 4 1/2 miles of the hike. At the point where you take the hard right turn to wrap around the backside of The Butte, there is a tree with 2 silver diamonds on it. This marks the "trail" towards Mount Kent. We headed southeast through a boulder field, hugging the trees, and dropped down to Forest Road 5020. From here we followed the road to a split where we headed left.

At the turn in the road, we headed straight up east towards Alice Lakes. We could find no trace of any trail whatsoever, so we just utilized GPS and pulled ourselves up through the steep, slippery slopes. In about 500 feet, we reached the first of Alice Lakes, which were partially frozen and very pretty. We made our way east past the second lake and headed up the boulders and through another another patch of woods. We had researched a couple of trip reports and tracks, which showed a route people had taken northeast, up to a ridge and then to the summit. We decided to head straight up the boulder field, staying just slightly left straight towards where we knew the summit was (you can't really see it from here). There was a final pitch of 300 or 400 feet of very, very steep, muddy, brushy woods and then we found ourselves on the summit of Mount Kent.

There was actually a summit register, which we unfortunately couldn't open because it was too tightly sealed. The views were nice for this area of the I-90 corridor, and we spend quite a bit of time on the summit enjoying the sun. We made our way down towards the lakes, which was a bit treacherous, as was the final stretch between Alice Lakes and the Forest Road. From here it was easy to scramble back up the final 500 feet to the McClellan Butte trail for the remainder of our trip out.

Overall, this was a good adventure for something so close to Seattle. Keep in mind that there is no marked trail, and quite a bit of bushwhacking and mossy, slippery rocks to navigate. 11.58 miles on GPS, and 4,209 feet of total gain. Thanks for reading and happy hiking/bushwhacking!