It was nice to sleep in a bit later than usual today. I got up around 7:45AM or so, rather than our usual 6:00AM wake-up. Of course Wolf Bird was already out of the tent by the time I awoke, so I got up and set out to find him. He was down by the store and restaurant. He said Tofu was planning on taking a 9AM shuttle to the bakery and asked if I wanted to join. He barely had time to finish his question, however, before the red shuttle bus started its engine and began to pull out. I guess he was off by an hour, because it was only 8:00AM… so that made the decision for me. We would hang out here until the 11:30AM shuttle that would make a brief stop at the bakery (where we assumed Tofu would hop on, since she was on that 8AM shuttle) and then drop us off back at the trail. It is a little annoying to have to plan around the shuttle schedule, but I would rather have a guaranteed ride than have to walk the many miles back to trail. Besides, sometimes it is nice to have fewer options or distractions in town–it is more relaxing to have everything you need within 0.1 miles!
With that decided, Wolf Bird and I then got breakfast at the restaurant. We enjoyed a nice meal with many coffee refills. I may or may not have also snuck in my cinnamon bun that I’d bought yesterday at the bakery and secretly ate it in addition to the breakfast I’d ordered.
After breakfast we took down our tent and packed up our stuff and then lounged about on Adirondack chairs on the porch by the store and restaurant. Wolf Bird surprised me and even bought me a ‘bear claw’ chocolate which was really just a big heap of chocolate in an oval-ish paw shape with four almonds as the ‘claws’. Other hikers showed up as the 11:30AM shuttle time approached and it was surprising to me that we’d actually not seen or met these hikers yet… even in as small a community as Stehekin! At 11:00AM I had to go back to the restaurant to order fries to go because… well do I even need to explain by now?!
We all hopped on the shuttled when it arrived and Wolf Bird and I sat up front near the driver. The driver stood up to make an announcement before we departed and midspeech noticed I had a giant to-go box of fries. At the end of the speech he pointed out that I’d brought fries, in front of the entire bus, which I was more proud about than embarrassed by. I of course offered him some fries, but he politely declined. The shuttle took off and we stopped by the bakery, where we picked up Tofu, and then dropped us all off at the trailhead by 12:15PM.
Everyone else packed up and set out hiking right within minutes of the shuttle dropping us off, but Wolf Bird, Tofu, and I lounged about for a bit before finally mustering up the will to get walking. We planned to hike about 18 miles today, which was somewhat ambitious given that we were starting close to 1PM. We are technically in North Cascades National Park, so if we didn’t hike the 15 miles that marked the boundary of the park, we’d have to stay at an established national park campsite, which required a special permit. We didn’t want to deal with getting a permit, and also wanted to hike a full day, so we set out to hike 18 miles to a trailhead by a road and hope there’d be some flat ground there for us to camp on.
We set out hiking and had an uphill to start out our afternoon. It felt so incredibly hot out! We were all surprised by how hot it was and how strong the sun felt–I think most PCTers expect Washington to be pretty misty and cloudy, but this was not the case for us today! Almost immediately we ran into a super friendly park ranger who asked us if we needed any permits if we planned to camp in the park tonight. That was pretty cool to have the option to get a permit on the go, but we’d already decided we’d hike out of the park today so we politely declined. She congratulated us on our hike, which felt crazy–it does not feel real that we are almost to the end of our journey.
Before long, we came across a beautiful lake–Howard Lake. Surprisingly, or I guess perhaps not so surprisingly , this lake was only recently renamed Howard Lake. It used to be called ‘Coon Lake’, quite a racist slur, named after the only black prospector in the area 100+ ago.
Nearly the entirety of our hiking today was uphill, and combined with the hot temperatures and strong sun, it felt a bit tougher than usual. Luckily, we had some beautiful scenery to look at as we hiked. By around 3:30PM, Wolf Bird, Tofu, and I reached a cascading stream with a beautifully built suspension bridge up above. We stopped and took a break and ended up sitting for over 30 minutes, which is quite rare for us especially when hiking out of town. As we hung out and ate snacks, some other hikers caught up and joined us. One girl had twisted or even sprained her ankle last week but is determined to get to Canada before cold weather sets in and is just powering through. After our break we walked behind her for a bit and I was so impressed by her pace–I could barely catch her!! There are some amazingly tough people out here.
After our snack break, we still had about 8 miles to go for the day. We rounded a bend and ran into some hikers going the other direction–not uncommon since many people are flipping up to the Canadian border and hiking south in fear of not beating cold weather or of current wildfires near the trail potentially spreading and closing parts of the trail. But as we drew closer to these hikers, Wolf Bird and I realized we recognized them! It was a crew of three that we’d met and hiked around back in Northern CA near Burney! When Wolf Bird and I had met them, all of us had flipped were heading south from Ashland, OR to the Sierra. They were probably the only people we actually hiked near for more than a couple hours on our Southbound flip besides Phil, who had hiked with them for a while too. We chatted with them for a bit and discovered they flipped up to the border after finishing the Sierra… so they have almost 900 miles of trail left! I was oddly jealous that they had so much time left on the trail, but also felt glad that I didn’t have to walk that far.
The rest of the afternoon was not too eventful. We finally arrived at the trailhead as it was growing dark. Tofu was a bit behind Wolf Bird and I. We planned to check out the parking area, which was actually off trail a bit. We expected to find an empty parking area, given that it was a Tuesday night, but were shocked to find a nearly full parking lot! The road the parking area was off of was also far busier than we expected, with cars whizzing by at 60mph. It wasn’t steady traffic by any means, but with cars going by every 10 minutes or so, it is more trafficky than many areas we’ve been on this trail.
Luckily there was a picnic table at the corner of the parking lot closest to the road that had some flat areas surrounding it. Wolf Bird and I started to set up our tent, eyeing some dark clouds moving in quickly and hoping it wouldn’t start raining. Tofu came along soon after and had to do some extra work to set up her tent because the ground was so hard her stakes wouldn’t go in!
As we were finishing setting up and starting to have dinner, a man approached from across the parking lot and introduced himself as the head of the PCTA in Washington (I can’t remember his actual title, so this may not be exactly correct). Anyway, he told us he is out here to do trail maintenance with a group of volunteers for the next few days. He pointed to a big trailer that also had a horse trailer as part of the giant vehicle and told us that was his friend who brought some horses to help pack gear to the trail. Then he asked us if we’d want some beers! Uhhh, of course! We enjoyed amazing trail magic in the form of some Deschutes Brewery beers as well as fresh veggies from his garden! The veggies even included a lemon cucumber, which the three of us had never had before. I had one of my best overall dinners on trail–with the beer and veggies as well as an amazing Pad Thai meal that Gretchen sent me! It felt like an actual meal I’d eat off trail. That reminds me–I forgot to mention the mail I received in Stehekin. Gretchen sent some truly delicious meals that had me eating like a queen for a few days, while Devon sent two mini wine bottles for us to enjoy when we finished! I am so lucky to have such thoughtful friends (who understand my love of food and drink) THANK YOU TWO!
With full and happy bellies, the three of us went to bed a bit later than usual. We decided that the dark clouds overhead looked like they were just blowing over and that it seemed like it probably wouldn’t rain in the night. And the car traffic on the road died down so it was quieter and easier to sleep. It was a good day!
