Day 142: Fire Alternate #2

Date: Thurs 9/6

PCT Start Mile: 2543.2

PCT End Mile: 2551.8

PCT Mileage for Day: 8.6

Alternate Mileage for Day: 16.8

Total Mileage for Day: 25.4

Total PCT Mileage: NA*

The Highlights: smokey skies, the fire alternate, a bear, and a stop through Holden Village

*ended the day on the fire alternate 

Waking this morning, the smell of smoke was still thick in the air, time to get out of here. The remainder of our time along the PCT climbed gradually over 8 miles, the smell and taste of smoke thick through much of the hike. The sky a a haze.

Not too long before our detour off the PCT, we met another hiker heading southbound. He had apparently originally started the trail from the south, at the Mexico border, as we had, on Friday, April 13th. We didn’t catch why he had gotten off trail, but he had started again, this time southbound from the Canada border, again on a Friday the 13th (this time in July), but had been forced off trail when he blew out his knee. Now he was at it again. His trail name was FOG, for “Fucking Old Guy”. He had just come from the alternate and said it was a nice trail to Holden. We had read elsewhere that it was mostly downhill, so were looking forward to that.

Continuing on, it wasn’t much further up the trail before we hit the alternate. Our second fire alternate of the trail, both in Washington. The PCT was closed from here to Stehekin, our next town stop, due to the Bannock Lakes Fire. The alternate included 11 miles to Holden Village, and then 17 miles from Holden to Stehekin, totaling about 8 miles longer than the original PCT. Washington is trying to keep us here as long as possible.

While we had been excited about the reports of the trail being “all downhill to Holden”, apparently everyone forgot to mention that the alternate began with a very steep 1.7 mile climb to Clouds Pass, the trail steeply ascending through the rocky mountainside, the rocks often forming giant steps.

After this initial climb, the majority of the trail was downhill, descending through a variety of terrain: rock, meadow, overgrown bushes, forest, more rock, etc. It also seemed to be quite the wildlife trail, as we spotted 2 deer, 3 giant toads, 4 snakes, many chipmunks, and a bear!

Heading along a beautiful lake, Shawn suddenly told me to hold up. He had seen something big and black walking across the trail ahead, and sure enough, a black bear was making his way into the bushes. We made a bunch of noise, hoping it would run off, but it was very busy eating from the bushes, and not very interested in us. As we made more noise heading up the trail, it slowly meandered just a bit further from the trail, annoyed that it should need to do this. It stopped on a rock, waiting for us to pass so it could go back to its business. 

We snapped a couple quick pictures as we passed. It snorted as Shawn focused for one last shot. All right, all right, we’re going. We continued up the trail so the bear could go back to its berry eating. This was our 5th bear sighting of the trip. (The last three came as a packaged deal with a mama bear and two cubs in Northern California).

The rest of the trail was less eventful and it was going on 2pm when we ran into a couple of southbounders along the trail not far from Holden. They were “NOBO SOBOs”. Basically this means they had been hiking the trail northbound (like us), but at some point determined that they weren’t going to make it to/through Washington before it snowed, so flipped up to the Canada border and were now hiking south to where they had left off. We’ve met a few people doing this. We are glad we aren’t in this boat, because it would be really hard to go to the border and then convince ourselves to walk south. Once we hit Canada, we are done 😆

We also learned some other very important information from these hikers. We had actually skipped taking a break for lunch, knowing we would be into Holden soon and could get hot food and cold drinks when we got there. We had been looking forward to this all day. From what we knew, there was one restaurant in the village, attached to the hotel. 

Running into these two hikers, we learned that our information wasn’t quite correct. First, they told us that lunch was over. This is when we learned that Holden didn’t have a restaurant, it had a cafeteria, with set hours for each meal. But, they said, the kitchen staff were very accommodating and we might still be able to get something to eat. The dinner started at 5pm and was buffet style, all you could eat, with tacos tonight. We had not planned on staying that long. This news was just getting worse and worse. They did say Holden was really great and there were a lot of other hikers there. We wished them a good hike and continued on to Holden.

Entering the ecumenical village of Holden.

Walking into Holden, things only got worse. At the registration desk, we learned that, in addition to what we had already been told about lunch being over and dinner being at 5pm, there was NOWHERE you could buy a cold drink. They did not sell a single soda, Gatorade, or other cold beverage besides water in this little village. The store had some candy bars, and it would open at 3pm. In an hour. Otherwise, there was some apple juice and orange juice, which you could get if you bought the $8 deal which allowed you to help yourself to a table of breads, PB&J, some fruit, and juice. Ugh. 

There was also no WiFi, but there was a laptop in the building across the street if we needed to connect. We had clearly stepped back in time here. This day was getting terrible. We asked if we could just hang out in the cafeteria area until the store opened at 3pm, which they were fine with, so we found a table and ate the crappy lunches from our food bags. We were so looking forward to a hot lunch. No dice. And we were in shock that you couldn’t buy a single cold beverage – soda or anything else – anywhere here. 

We had also heard that there were milkshakes here. And there were! You could get one at the snack shop when it opened at 8:30pm!! WTF! Why isn’t there anything to buy NOW! We know all of this sounds petty, but when you’re on the trail for days, there are a few minor luxuries you want when you enter civilization.

While we sat in the cafeteria, Doobie arrived. We first met Doobie back at Caribou Crossing in Northern California and had seen him off and on since then, including the last few stops in Washington. I’ll give you three guesses as to how he got his trail name, but you’re only going to need one. He’s also hiked the Appalachian Trail, so I’m not sure if he got the name there, or adopted a new trail name on the PCT. 

At any rate, Doobie was beyond hungry. He had ran out of food on the trail yesterday and hiked 25 miles today without eating anything. Now he was learning all the terrible things that we were learning. There was hardly any food to buy here unless you were around for meal time. He paid the $8 to eat the random bread assortment. I gave him some extra starbursts.

Apparently running out of food is not a new phenomenon for Doobie. This basically happens before every single town for him. He runs out the day or day before he’s heading into the next town. Shawn and I have never run out of food. We don’t even understand how this happens to people. And it seems to happen to plenty of people. It’s not that hard to figure out about how many days it’s going to take you to get to the next stop, and you can throw in a couple extra ramens and snacks just in case.

At 3pm, we visited the store, which was really more of a gift shop with t-shirts and handmade crafts, and a small wall that had some candy, which is what we were here for. Sugar! The woman at the register told us that Holden had originally been a copper mining operation. In the 1960s, long after the mining operation was closed, a Lutheran group had purchased the facilities. Today it’s an ecumenical village, with all faiths – or even no faith – welcome. Open year round. 

The woman kept repeating what a special and wonderful place it was. I’m sure it’s great for city folk who are looking to get into the mountains, escape urban life, and sing Kum Ba Yah, but when we come into a town for a short stop, there are basically three things we want/need: hot food, cold sugary drinks, and a way to connect to the rest of the world (WiFi or cell service). Unless we could stick around for a meal hour, none of these things were happening, putting Holden pretty low on our list of “wonderful” places. We bought a stash of candy bars and hit the trail.

From Holden, there were actually two possible ways to get to Stehekin. There was no road connecting the two places. Option 1 was to continue hiking the alternate, another 17 miles to Stehekin. Option 2 was to take a shuttle to the town of Lucerne and then a ferry to Stehekin. There was one ferry a day at 10:30am. Against our better judgment, we took option 1. This had always been the plan, wanting to follow through with our continuous footpath to Canada. Plus, we did not want to hang out in Holden overnight to wait for the shuttle and morning ferry from Lucerne.

Hiking up through the ravine.

It wasn’t very long before we were somewhat regretting this decision. Not really, because we wanted the continuous hike, but DAMN, was it a lot of work. The alternate out of Holden Village was a massive climb, ascending steeply into the mountains for six miles. Why, Washington? The trail ascended steeply, eventually undulating its way upward through a ravine, following along and above a river. The ravine was clearly the victim of a burn itself, with the trees charred at the beginning of some new growth. Continuing upward this ravine led to an expansive meadow that sloped upward toward an amphitheater of mountains, towering above us on all sides except the ravine we had just climbed up. Nowhere to go but up. And so, we climbed steeply through the mountains again.

Looking back on the meadow we’d just hiked up, toward the ravine.

Looking forward toward our destination, between the cut in the mountainside. 

It was nearing 6:30pm when we reached the top of the climb and, with a single tent site available at the pass, we decided to camp, not knowing how far it would be until we found another tent site. Tomorrow it looks like we will have just over 11 miles to hike, most of which will be downhill, to reach the road to Stehekin, where there are supposedly four shuttles a day that do pick ups along the road. 

Stehekin is another very small village/resort area, and we’ll pick up our last resupply box here. And hopefully get hot food and cold drinks! Time will tell. Last stop before Canada!!!