Day 143: Into Stehekin
Date: Fri 9/7
PCT Start Mile: NA*
PCT End Mile: NA*
PCT Mileage for Day: 0
Alternate Mileage for Day: 11.2
Total Mileage for Day: 11.2
Total PCT Mileage: 2571.9**
The Highlights: beautiful sunrise, downhill hike, the bakery, and beautiful Lake Chelan
*all miles today along a fire alternate to Stehekin
**mile we rejoin the PCT leaving Stehekin
Waking this morning, all was calm. I had been worried that since we’d camped high on the pass, we’d open ourselves up to potential wind throughout the night. It had been a bit windy when we’d set up last night, but it died down and the night and morning were calm. We packed up and hit the trail before 6:30am.
We had just over 11 miles to hike to get to Stehekin, our last resupply stop of this adventure. Crazy.
The trail began with a steep descent from the pass, switchbacking sharply across the mountainside. The sunrise colors in the sky ahead were gorgeous.
Lucky for us, we had done most of the hard work on this section of the fire alternate yesterday, hiking up a ludicrous ascent to the pass. It was pretty, but boy we worked for it. This morning’s hike was a different kind of work. The steep downhills kept me on my toes, and the trail was otherwise full of rocks, roots, and overgrown brush. It was a lot of work even for descending. It hadn’t been much of a trail before it was used for a PCT reroute, but was getting fairly stomped down by hikers.
We arrived to the Company Creek Road not long after 10:30am, finishing up the last mile of the detour along the road. A shuttle did four pickups a day along the road, but with the next pickup scheduled for 12:30pm, we decided to just start walking toward Stehekin. The famous bakery was only two and a half miles down the road.
Just before the Harlequin Bridge, a guy came by on a bicycle and stopped to chat a bit. He asked what the trail conditions were on the alternate and said that with any luck, we might catch a pickup heading down the road for a hitch to the bakery. He kinda said this with a laugh, like – good luck – there are hardly any cars here.
But, we did get lucky actually, and not too far into our walk along the Stehekin River, a forest ranger named Tom picked us up in his small beat up pick-up truck, giving us a lift to the bakery. We apologized profusely for how bad we smelled. We had just been talking about our stench this morning. Definitely in the top three worst smelling of the entire trip. If Tom cared, he did not let on. He talked to us about the trail and Stehekin, and confirmed that the vast majority of the hikers were taking the ferry to Stehekin rather than the brutal alternate that we had just hiked. We could definitely see why, but were glad we had hiked it. Continuous footpath to Canada. Within minutes we were at the bakery.
The bakery! We had been reading about this bakery for days! Finally hot food and cold drinks! The village of Stehekin is tiny, really just a wilderness recreation area – the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area. Nestled along Lake Chelan in the North Cascades, it is accessible only by foot, boat, or small plane. The cars and pickups that are around had been hauled in by ferry or barge because the roads up here don’t actually go anywhere other than the lakefront and residential mountain homes. There is no road connection to any major – or even minor – outside roads. The bakery actually sits two miles from the main hub of Stehekin along the lake and, due to this geography, operates its own free shuttle to and from the village.
Actually 2,570 miles, but the point is, we’ve come a long way.
Inside the bakery, our eyes grew wide. We quickly purchased sandwiches, blueberry cheesecake crumbles, and two cold beverages each, and found a nice shaded picnic table outside, where we could keep our stench away from the other patrons. This said, about half of the other patrons were also hikers, some also freshly off the trail, so we certainly weren’t the only ones who didn’t smell like roses.
After scarfing down our haul, we returned to the counter to pick up some food to eat later, including pizza squares and giant cinnamon rolls. Unsure of when the next bakery shuttle would come, we started walking down the road toward the main village. We’d made it about a mile when the shuttle came by, stopping to give us a lift the rest of the way.
Coming into the village, you could instantly see why people loved Stehekin. Lake Chelan was gorgeous, its clear blue waters surrounded by towering mountains.
Despite being pretty full, we were lucky enough to get a room at the lodge. While waiting for the room, we walked back down the road a short ways to the post office, which basically looked like it was in a portion of the lower level of a guys house. (Really, pretty sure this was the case). We waited while he unloaded a new load of packages from his mini van before heading in to pick up our own boxes. The small post office portion of the home was covered wall to wall with stacks of hiker resupply boxes, all labeled by number, with only the smallest amount of room for the man to walk around behind the counter.
After checking into our room, we were finally able to take showers and wash away the week of stench. While we had showered at Stevens Pass on Sunday, we hadn’t been able to do laundry there, so our clothes hadn’t been washed since before leaving Snoqualmie Pass last Friday. A week of stench. I don’t think my socks/shoes had ever smelled so bad. Maybe just in the Sierras, where we had constantly wet feet. After a week, they finally matched the stench of my sister’s feet after one normal day of hiking. I can say this because I know she doesn’t read this blog. 😂 Having gotten my feet soaked in at least one river crossing made the smell 10x worse than it would have been.
All this to say, our next stop was the public laundry building where, despite there only being one washer and one dryer, and lots of hikers lingering around the building with laundry to do, we were able to get our stuff in right away. We didn’t find that the machine did a very great job, but we had really put it to the test with our level of sock filth, and we only have about four days left on trail anyway, so we didn’t care too much.
It’s hard to believe our journey will be coming to an end soon. Stehekin is our last resupply stop before the Canadian border. Such a unique little place, it’s a great way to end our trail town journey, which has been as memorable as the trail itself. The journey along the PCT took us to small towns, villages, campgrounds, and other areas that we would have never otherwise visited. Really great little places (most of them), which are largely overlooked as the majority of people only visit the coastal areas of the west coast states.
We spent the rest of the afternoon on the porch of the lodge, talking to other hikers. Doobie had arrived on the ferry later than we’d even arrived by hiking and was heading back to the trail again this evening. With a flight booked from Seattle on the morning of the 11th, he had to seriously boogie to get to the border, as well as hike back around twenty miles to get to a point where he could hitch. Hopefully he packed enough food.
He had also confirmed that Holden was “awesome” – when you were there at night. The food was amazing, including the ice cream available later in the evening, and the whole place was alive with visitors, who had all been out enjoying the outdoors when we had been around earlier in the day, making it feel like more of a ghost town. Anyway, we will never know the amazingness of Holden for ourselves.
Nom nom nom…
For dinner, we ate our bakery stash, pizza and some of our giant cinnamon rolls. I also had some Reese’s PB cups that had been gifted to us by a hiker that had sent too much food in his resupply box. Another meal of champions. Hoping I’ll be able to wean myself off all this junk when we’re done hiking in a few short days!
There is a chance it may rain tonight – and also a chance we will get some precipitation during the next few days of hiking. It sounds like Monday night, there may even be a chance of snow at the higher elevations and passes, though we should be to lower elevation by then.
Tomorrow we set off for the final leg of this journey. It’s been amazing, but Canada is calling and we must go!
