We hike into Stehekin and join a big group of Southbound hikers for dinner, then at the thruhiker campsite. I hiked 17 miles, my 71st day on the PCT.
By the time we wake up the next morning, the sun is high-most of the other hikers are gone from the thruhiker campsite at Stehekin. The lake is brilliantly blue, with little whitecaps-there is a warm, summer wind.
We pick up our food boxes from the tiny post office, then take showers and do laundry. We hang out with our new friends, a couple from
Seattle-Trent is a recently-quit Air Force pilot, and his wife Rachel is a professor at a community college. Trent and Filip talk urban planning-Trent is about to start a master’s degree in urban planning at the University of Washington, and Filip is an urban planner for the city of Stockholm.
I wander back over to the Lodge, pack my food into my backpack-6 days, 110 miles to Stevens Pass and Leavenworth. The bus takes us back to the trailhead in the afternoon-but first, it makes a stop at the Stehekin Pastry Company. I buy a cinnamon roll the size of my head and eat it with Filip on the bus, which is a sticky, joyful five minutes.
We get back to the High Bridge trailhead and hike up the trail. It is warm, and sunny-the storms seem to have given it a rest at least today. We go 5 miles and camp next to Pass Creek at aptly-named “FiveMile Camp.” We hiked 5 miles today, the 72nd day on trail.
We get moving late today, around 10 am. It’s hot and feels like summer, finally. The trail goes up gradually, then steeply, towards Siuattle Pass. Large sections are overgrown. I feel irritable and hot and kind of bored for most of the day. We leapfrog with a British hiker named Ben throughout the day, that zeroed at Stehekin and took the early bus back to the trail.
We camp in the evening in a meadow near the top of the pass, with about one billion mosquitos. We split two Mac and Cheeses in my pot for dinner. We hiked 14.5 miles today, the 73rd day on trail.
We get moving earlier today, around 7:30. We drop down to Miners Creek, and then the Siuattle River.
We are now deep in Glacier Peak Wilderness, one of the wildest and remote places on the PCT. Paved roads are far away in every direction. Because of a combination of the remote nature of this piece of trail, catastrophes floods over the last 20 years, and funding cuts to the Forest Service, this is probably the least-maintained section of the entire Pacific Crest Trail. Large sections are more akin to bootpack or use-trail, rather than the manicured trail we are accustomed to.
Eleven years ago, there was a brand-new bridge across the Siuattle river, that was a huge win for all backcountry users and the people that maintain the Trail-however, the maintainers added 6 extra miles of Trail to to bridge because of the steep cavern the Siuattle River carves. The bridge was new, but the original PCT was easy to follow, and, well, 6 miles is a lot of “extra” trail to hike-and there was a huge log across the raging Siuattle. Wooly and I walked the old trail, slightly overgrown-and I butt-scooted across the log.
As we drop down onto the Siuattle, I can see that there is no evidence of the old PCT, any more. The wild forest has absorbed the trail in these past 11 years. We walk the 6 miles of “new” trail, which goes through an absolutely incredible stand of extremely old-growth forest.
Two hundred year old hemlocks and cedars tower into the sky, silent, enduring, their gnarled bark covered in layer after layer of moss. The “new” bridge is wide and strong-but sadly already damaged, I see, by a massive fallen tree on its northern side.
I start the climb back out of the river’s canyon, through what is probably the most notorious section of Washington’s PCT. Massive blow downs require hiker gymnastic moves every 20-30 feet all the way up the hill. I take my time, clambering up, over, under, and around fallen trees. As the forest gives way to alpine meadows, the sun sets, and I am exhausted, soaked in sweat. I start to count switchbacks in the trail as a way to pass the time. One. Two. Three. Four.
As I count Switchback 33, I round the corner to find Filip and three other hikers crammed into a small camping area perched on the ridge.
“Geez, that was pretty hard!” I say. “I was pretty sure one of those trees I was koala-hugging was just going to start to slide, and plunge back down the hill into the Siuattle. I don’t think it was in as bad condition eleven years ago.”
Filip laughs. “Well, you’re eleven years older too…”
We make dinner in the tent and eat in the twilight. I hiked 20 miles today, the 74th day on trail.
We continue the Glacier Peak Wilderness sufferfest the next morning. The trail winds tortuously down a steep ridge, crumbling and eroded, completely overgrown with thimbleberry and stinging nettle.
It is hot and sunny, and I feel the unfocused rage that is reflected in the silly FarOut comments in this section- “WHY can’t the Forest Service do their JOBS!”
We spit out at the bridge over Milk Creek. “I fantasized about just taking a flame thrower and torching that whole descent,” Filip says, maybe half-joking.
The trail immediately continues steeply up the other side. In the afternoon, we reach a moment’s reprieve-sparkling Mica Lake. Any motivation to "crush miles" (hike a lot of miles in the day) dies here, and we spend two hours on the lake’s shore, naked in the sun and swimming. It is in moments like these that I feel how uniquely strange and beautiful life out here is. We are in paradise-but the going is hard and intense, and we only have a limited amount of food, a fact we are constantly aware of-we are constantly aware of how far we have come, and how far we have to go.
We finally continue on after 4 pm. The trail stays Alpine for some time, which is a relief-no thick forest and fallen trees to climb over. We camp in the evening, below Glacier Peak. This really an incredibly beautiful section of the PCT, it’s just brutal as well. I hiked 17 miles today, the 75th day on trail.
We leave early this morning, around 7 am. We’re running low on food again and need to hustle ourselves along to Stevens Pass and our resupply. The trail continues through more thick forest, more broken and missing bridges, until in the late afternoon, it finally breaks into the Alpine again near the Wilderness boundary. We rejoice to be out of the designated Wilderness area. This section of the PCT is almost manicured, and there are tons of folks out for the weekend and probably Glacier Peak climbers camped along the ridge line.
The sun starts to set, under a thin cloud layer-the surrounding peaks turn gold, then rose, in every direction. Twilight settles in and I pull out my headlamp. In the dark, I finally round the corner to Lake Sally Ann, where Filip has set up the tent. He has taken a swim in the dark and greets me enthusiastically as I hike up. I am struck by this otherworld that we live in currently-the tent, and the night sky, and the dark lake-and how this is just another day, and night, in what has become normal-but I feel the exhaustion in my body and mind at this tough section. I hiked 23 miles today, the 76th day on trail.
Today is Filip’s 41st birthday. We have a leisurely morning, walking out of the camp just before 11 am. We continue to follow the trail up and down for another 4500 feet of gain today. I am tired enough that I don’t notice the scenery so well now-we need to rest. We camp in a soggy meadow with its associated hordes of mosquitoes. I hiked 17.5 miles today, my 77th day on trail.
We wake up to a thick, misty cloud cover. Intermittent rain patters the tent. Staring at the tent ceiling, Filip says, “….do you ever wonder why we’re doing this?”
I look at him. “We need to go to town. Our bodies need rest. That’s where those thoughts come from.”
We pack up and hike the few miles to Smith Brook Trailhead, then drop down to a parking lot. We walk for a few minutes down the dirt road, then get picked up by a friendly local couple out for a day hike who take us halfway down Route 2 towards Leavenworth. We hitch the last 15 miles with a man in his 70s, probably on some kind of substances, that regales us with a one-sided story about women on dating apps and the Metaverse.
He deposits us politely outside the Howard Johnson in Leavenworth. I turn to Filip as he pulls away. “Well…..that was a spicy ride.”
He shutters a little. “That was some interesting driving.”
We walk to the pizza shop next door and take on the task of eating an entire large pizza and beers. Then, we go to the post office to pick up our boxes. We determine we should go to the larger town of Wenatchee to zero, because hotels there are exactly half the price of Leavenworth hotels during this busy summer vacation season.
I settle outside the post office to make a “PCT HIKERS TO WENATCHEE” hitching sign with my broken-down Priority Mail box and my Sharpie. Filip teases me about this, and I tell him he isn’t doing anything to help us get to Wenatchee-but he gets the last laugh when we cross the street to the bus stop across from the post office. A bus happens to pull up in that moment. I ask the bus driver, “are you going all the way to Wenatchee?”
“Yes. This is a free bus.”
Filip gloats at me as we load ourselves onto the bus with our packs and my big useless sign. I fall asleep on his shoulder as we make the 45-minute trip into Wenatchee. We hiked 9 miles today, our 78th day on trail.
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