A thick milky haze hung over everything like a dense fog. It was chalky white, like what static would look like if it had a shape and face, and we could barely see the trees that lined Route 2 as we sat in the packed bus headed towards Stevens Pass.
Canada was having a tough year with forest fires. The thick smoke was from that. Thousands of acres of forest were burning in British Columbia to our north, and with the wind coming from up that way, all the dense smoke was filling up Washington like a lake.
“It looks like Seattle is under an air quality alert,” I told Carolyn.
“Are we going to die?” She mocked. She wasn’t too concerned.
The bus pulled over to the side of the road and rolled to a bumpy stop. I could barely see the ski mountain to my left. A shadow of a building was outlined near the base of it, like something out of a painting. It looked eerie, not beautiful. In fact, it looked much the same as when we left it 10 and a half months ago, except then it was in a cold and wet fog, barely 50 degrees. Now it was over 90 degrees and painfully hot. It was difficult taking in a deep breath. I figured this is what it felt like to live in Saudi Arabia; the air still and stiff, suffocating everything it fell upon, like a python wrapping itself around its prey and choking every last living breath out of it.
The bus rolled away over the other side of the pass, blowing up dust and sand from the side of the shoulder. We hiked on and found the trailhead. Only 107 miles of hard wilderness rested between us and the small lake town of Stehekin. Aside from one 150 mile stretch on the CDT, this was the second longest I’ve had to hike. I didn’t much care for it. Six days is a heck lot of food to carry. And the further out in the middle of nowhere you find yourself, the higher the consequence if something were to happen.
We hoisted our packs and marched onward into the heat. Some 26,000 feet of elevation gain and loss lay up ahead. Best to get on with it.
The days came and went without much fuss. It WAS pretty,but most everything was shrouded in a haze. Sweeping vistas which were certainly there appeared as only distant shadowy blobs. It was a bit of a disappointment. Part of the reason we stopped last year was to be able to experience this section with clear days and warmer temperatures. Instead we got weather that was too hot and views that looked like grey amoebas floating through the color of television static.
On the third day we crested Reds Pass, which surprisingly did offer a semi clear grand view of a giant bowl leading into sharp mountains, with Mount Glacier looming kingly in the background.
Mount Glacier is a mean looking mountain. It’s more foreboding than most. Glaciers straddle all sides of it, sloping down its bulbous edges like melting marshmallow. It’s hard to imagine anyone climbing up it. It most certainly must be hard, requiring expert alpine mountaineering skills, none of which I posses nor care to learn.
For having hiked as mush as I have, it sometimes shocks me how little wilderness skills I actually have.
We descended down reds Pass for a long time, only to come sharply back up. The trail does this in this section about three times. The climbs are hard only because they are long. But the grade is actually decent and not too steep.
On our final night we went up and over the last pass, cloudy pass. We camped near the top overlooking a fuzzy valley. The sun set over a large snow capped ridge and painted the sky salmon. I tried staying outside to capture a good image and enjoy the sunset, but the flies were so bad that what should have been a pleasant evening climbing up a bowl to get a better composition, was unfortunately cut short.
The flies have been epically terrible. They are deer flies and have a bad set of teeth on them. I don’t know why they bite. It makes no sense to me. But they do, and when they do, they latch hard into your skin and take a big bite out of it. The only thing going against them is that they are very slow. Sometimes they just let you squish them. Maybe that’s the point of them trying to bite you all along. They just want a quick way to die.
On our sixth day we emerged into Highbridge ranger station, situated at the edge of North Cascades National Park. I don’t think anyone actually mans it anymore. It looks deserted, haunted even, and the wood is splitting near the post beams and floorboards. This is where you can catch a lift into Stehekin, 11 miles south, on the Narional Park bus along a winding and narrow dirt road. It’s quite the ripoff at 8 dollars one way. But if you don’t want to walk, this is your only ticket to town.
The small town of Stehekin is an interesting place. There’s a few homes, a restaurant, a small store, the National Park Visitors Center, a Post Office, the Lodge Resort, and a campground, all situated along the picturesque northern tip of Lake Chelan. The lake itself is the highlight, with deep green and indigo water, clear as day, and abrupt mountain cliffs that cascade down into it. There’s no road access here, so all visitors and traffic come by ferry boat a few times a day. It’s an isolated place, surrounded by spires of mountains with snow on the very tips. Granite cornices spindle into jagged outcroppings, where tiny crevasses remain packed with snow under the heavy fall of shadows.
After the unceremonious chores that come with a town stop (get packages at post office, do laundry and take a shower) we ventured to the restaurant for a meal.
The dinner menu was a bit shocking. Everything was at least 18 dollars, including a hamburger.
An older waitress came by and wiped the table down. “Anything to drink?” she asked, all smiles.
“Just water,” Carolyn replied.
“A coke for me,” I said. Might as well go all in.
She came back shortly with our drinks. The Coke was in a can. No free refills I guessed.
She rambled off the specials, and then added, “Also, our fryer is out of order, so no French fries, buffalo wings, coconut shrimp or chicken fingers.”
We both ordered pasta primavera, mine with chicken, Carolyn’s with salmon.
“Are the portions big?” Carolyn asked. If we were going to spend 25 dollars on a bowl of spaghetti, we wanted to know what we were getting into.
“It’s pretty big, yeah,” she said. “It’s probably the biggest entree. Are you PCT hikers?”
We nodded.
“How wonderful! I usually keep around a book. I like hikers to sign it, but I don’t have it with me. I’ll tell the chef to give you a little extra.”
The wait was long for our food, but it wasn’t that surprising. You can’t expect a great deal from these small places in the middle of nowhere. We weren’t in a rush anyway, and the air conditioning felt really nice on our recently showered skin. Even at 7 o’clock the air outside was hot and menacing.
As we waited, we watched a couple eating dinner outside get overcome with bees. We recognized them from the bus into town. They had gone up in the morning for a day hike and were staying at the lodge. They wore identical red Texas A&M hats and were on vacation without their kids. Usually they take them hiking too, but apparently they were at Grandmas house working on the garden. According to them, this 100 degree heatwave was no big deal, and it actually reminded them of the sizzling heat back home in good ole Sant Antonio, Texas, where the sun was so strong eggs could be cooked on the sidewalk and you couldn’t take a deep breath because you feared the back of your throat would get burned.
I wondered if the bees reminded them of Texas too. They were swarming all around them as they tried eating their 20 dollar hamburgers with a side of mashed potatoes because the fryer was broken. Any sane person would ask to be moved, but they remained, gently waving their soft hands back and forth trying to make the bees go away. They looked like the type of people who don’t say anything when something crappy happens to them, because they don’t want to raise a fuss about it. Like the people who will wait around for a long time at a busy restaurant without asking how much longer it will be to be seated, only to find out after an ungodly length of time their names were never put on the list in the first place.
Eventually our pasta came, and they were actually good portions. We scarfed it all down in what appeared to be one breath. It was warm and not Ramen Noodles so of course it was satisfying.
The sun had descended behind the mountains, casting backlight over the grey water. It would have been a nice evening if it weren’t for the heat. The couple from Texas had finished their meal and left to get up, probably to go back to their room, open a bottle of wine and talk about their hike and laugh about the bees. “I couldn’t believe how many there were!” They’d say, laughing over the gentle wind, the light on the porch growing brighter with the oncoming dark, rocking chairs creaking on top of the squeaky porch floor. They’d talk well into the night about their kids and about their jobs. How good it felt to be away from all of that. How great it was to be alone together for a change.
And meanwhile, back in the campground, we’d be crawling into our sleeping bags under headlamp, nearly naked because of how hot it was, helplessly opening the mesh doors to the tent to try and capture any remaining airflow.
The moon would be above, and the stars too, at least the ones that were the brightest that shone through the fiery haze. We would laugh about how miserable it was and try and fall asleep, only to remain awake beside each other, eyes fixed on the dull black of the long night, not talking, thinking about everything and nothing at all.
