Walk About Martinez -- Washington's Alpine Lakes Wilderness

8-28-11  

Today’s hike, up over 3,500 feet from Snoqualmie Pass, has led us into the most beautiful mountain fastness so far, Washington’s Alpine Lakes Wilderness.  The hike has been exhausting but it’s all new terrain for me.  My notes on the map I used last year while thru hiking the Pacific Crest Trail say, “It rained all day, and snowed at elevation.”  I had missed it all, and it’s incredible.  We are only an hour and a half by car from Seattle and it could be the Alps.  Crag and rock tower over verdant green glacial valleys which are filled with spring flowers in September due to the heavy snow still clinging to much of the land.  Every view encompasses lakes and streams, forests and ever present avalanche chutes.   

We’ve crossed snow and drunk straight from springs welling up out of the ground.  The best one was a “cave spring” with a small underground waterfall from which we filled our bottles.  Even two jaded old geezers can get jazzed over an underground waterfall all set up as a trailside drinking fountain.  

At dusk we camped on a saddle above Joe Lake, and listened to marmots whistling as the light faded.  They seemed to be calling to each other in their high pitched piping, talking about who knows what, maybe just as excited by the marvelous weather as we were.  It was a long haul up, but this year it’s been bright and sunny and these mountains are incredible.

The next morning brought us one of the most beautiful days so far.  We hiked the long circle around a huge glacial basin, known as the cat walk.  For knock your socks off beauty, it’s all equal to anything on the John Muir Trail, only this trail tops out at just about 6,000 feet, not 13,000.  That makes for much more accessible high country.  The High Sierra is sculptured granite, whereas the Alpine Lakes Wilderness is both rock and green, very green, truly alpine scenery.  

At aptly named Spectacle Lake, waterfalls and snow gild the sheer rock surrounding this pristine spot.   We had lunch on Delate Creek, on a bridge built just below a roaring waterfall.  The mist cooled the air.  I could have stayed there all day, but the trail was good, and we ended up hiking a twenty mile day.  We were beat and camped by a small stream in a highland meadow.  

We were passed by lots of day hikers and runners on our first day out as it was the weekend and this is Seattle’s backyard. The great weather brought people out in droves.  I met Steve Bucher, out for a day hike.  He’s been a long time member of the Washington State Trail Blazers, http://www.watrailblazers.org/, a civilian organization begun in 1933 for the betterment of alpine fishing. Club members work as volunteers for the state of Washington, backpacking trout fry into Washington's alpine lakes and providing trail maintenance.  Hands on volunteerism seems to be a hallmark of the WA outdoors.

On our third day out we met two young brothers thru hiking the PCT, Sam and Ben, from Maryland.  Sam graduated from Georgia Tech and had hiked the Appalachian Trail.  He brought his younger brother on his next thru hike, and the two seemed dedicated to each other, and were simply having a ball on the PCT, which they were getting close to finishing. 

Further up trail we found Deb Davis and Jon Herman, thirty year US Forest Service seasonal employees, hard at work clearing trail.  The whole section suffered serious blowdowns from the heavy storms and snow of last winter.  In a Wilderness area, chain saws and power tools are not allowed, and they were busy sawing the trail blocking, fallen trees with a large, antique crosscut saw and an axe.  Artists when off trail, they said they loved their summers working in the high country.  The fresh air, trees and the beauty were their incentive in having made seasonal work a life long pursuit.  And for excitement, when the blowdowns were really big, dynamite was the approved method of clearing the trail.  A quarter of a mile further we met the second half of this crew, Rick and Pam, sawing away at a huge log obstruction.  

The following day we met the US Forest Service, Skykomish Trail crew Forman, Cameron Elias and his team, Nicholas Vasquez, Jessie Kiel and Washington Trails Association volunteer, Forest Kelly.   They too were pounding in wedges to keep the cut open on a great log that had fallen near the end of a switchback, blocking two sections of trail.  

Begun in 1966, the WTA http://www.wta.org/ “is the voice of hikers in Washington State,” and is responsible for providing thousands of volunteer hours yearly -- 100,000 hours in 2010 alone -- for the maintenance and promotion of Washington’s trails.  It is the largest program of its kind in the nation.  Kudos Washington.  You’ve got some of the most beautiful trails in the country, and a world class organization working with the US Forest Service to maintain them.

Later we met Waldo as he blasted past us.  A thru hiker from Cincinnati with a psych degree from Denison University, he’d hiked the Appalachian Trail in the past, and now was completing his second long thru hike in the West.  

Next was Sasha from Mill Valley CA, a second year geology student at UC Davis, who also hiked at a speed we geezers couldn’t match.  I’d met Sasha at the Kick Off at Lake Morena near the Mexican border in April, and here he was again.  He’d finished his quarter at Davis and hit the trail at Tuolumne Meadows in June.  That meant deep snow, dangerous river crossings, and hiking alone across it all.  What a brave young man.  We’d had a great connection at the KO, and again on trail.  He plans to finish the southern part of the trail after his sophomore year in college.

Intelligent, interesting and just plain good folks, most thru hikers are a breed worth talking to as long as you can keep up with their speed to stay within earshot.  They don’t like to slow down, and I can remember that feeling of urgency as I approached the Canadian border last year.  I loved to talk, as did everyone we met, but the goal was just too near to slow down. 

Tall and with a shock of bright red hair under his hiking hat and an unkempt beard, Crazy Mother caught up to me in the middle of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.  He’s a wildlife biologist from the University of Florida and was hiking north to Steven’s Pass but had originally started a southbound attempt of the PCT from Canada, in early June, and had quite the tail to tell. 

This may turn out to be the heaviest snow year in the history of the PCT, with 2006 as a close runner up.  In early June, 2011, Crazy Mother had started out from Manning Park Canada and found himself in deep snow by the end of the first day.  Several people who had also started a “sobo” hike thought better of the dangers ahead and decided to turn around.  Not so Crazy Mother, who said he would go forward alone into the frozen North Cascades.  He got his trail name on the spot.  

Hiking for several weeks through the Pasayten Wilderness, North Cascades National Park and finally Glacier Peak Wilderness, mostly on snow, he’d injured an ankle, but made it out alive to Steven’s Pass.  He spent several days at the Hiker Haven in Baring with the Dinsmores -- the wonderful trail angels I had begun my Washington hike with several weeks before -- who had tried to talk him out of continuing south given the dangerous trail conditions.  

Crazy Mother was undeterred however, when Andrea Dinsmore got a call from the Postmaster at the Baring Store, telling her to bring him over to meet someone.  Helen Thayer -- www.helenthayer.com -- the first woman to have trekked alone to the North Pole, had just stopped in for a bite.  A world famous mountaineer and adventurer, Helen and her husband Bill live nearby.  They’ve spent their lives hiking across deserts and mountains, living with wolves, kayaking the Amazon, living with tribal peoples and the list goes on.  

Helen told Crazy Mother that even with all her years of mountaineering -- twenty-one summits of Mt. Rainier alone -- she would not consider continuing south on the PCT at that time of year, given the potential dangers.  Crazy Mother listened and took the prudent step of jumping south on the trail and hiking back north.  I had met him as he was finishing this section, still alive, hiking like a gazelle and happy to talk on trail. 

At the end of the section, Richard and I hiked down through the lifts and ski runs at Steven’s Pass on September 1, 2011.  We had a potentially long “hitch” to get to Baring to pick up our resupply boxes and for our own evening at the Dinsmore’s, which is always fun.  We had found a lovely patch of porcini mushrooms right on the ski runs and gathered them to treat everyone who might be staying there to an haute cuisine appetizer of the finest mushroom in the world.  An autumn mushroom, this year they were coming up with the spring wildflowers.  That’s a short summer season.

Hitching a ride on the highway at Steven’s Pass is not easy as the cars are traveling at full speed over the top.  Two old geezers and backpacks is bad enough, but after a fruitless 45 minutes or so, up walked another old geezer with a backpack and a deep Tennessee accent.  Hoka-hey was finishing the PCT, which he had started in 2010, and although friendly enough, Richard and I were not happy at lessening our chances of getting a ride with three of us now trying for the same small pool of drivers.  But within 20 minutes, we were all picked up by a very jolly retired baker and his wonderful, lick you all over dog, who was just overjoyed at the prospect of several more hands to keep up the unending scratching behind the ears.  

Hoka-hey (his trail name), an admonition to hurry into battle also means, “It’s a good day to die” in Lakota Sioux.  At once a warrior’s boast as he charged into battle, it also has a deep side to it.  Are we ready right now for whatever existence has to throw at us?  

When I saw Hoka-hey hand our jolly baker $10 for having given us a ride down the hill to the little town of Baring, I knew we were with another thru hiker of character.  He did indeed turn out to be just that, a really wonderful guy with a great trail name.

We all walked the short distance to the Dinsmore’s Hiker Haven, where we found Waldo, Sasha, and Crazy Mother, already availing themselves of the hospitality and respite provided by Andrea and Jerry Dinsmore, two of the nicest trail angels on the PCT.  They maintain a big dormitory for thru hikers and will feed them if hungry.  She’s a retired truck driver, and he’s a retired diesel mechanic.  Salt of the earth, delightful, they spend their summers giving to the hiker community, so I cooked up those porcini buttons and treated everyone to what Hoka-hey declared the finest mushrooms he’d ever eaten.  That they were.

It wasn’t long before Andrea got a call that Helen and her husband Bill Thayer were back in town and having a sandwich at the Baring Store.  Several of us high tailed it back and I was treated to an interview with two of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.  

Helen is from New Zealand and counted among her family friends, Sir Edmond Hillary, the first person to summit Mt. Everest.  Bill is from the US.  In 1988, at age 50, Helen became the first woman, and the oldest person, to solo trek unsupported to the magnetic North Pole.  Her only companion was her Inuit “bear dog” Charlie who warned her of approaching polar bears that stalked her on the way.  Instead of carrying a gun however, she scared them off with flairs.  She thought guns of little value because if the first shot didn’t kill the bear, you’d be the one killed by the enraged animal.  Her book about this adventure is Polar Dream, with a forward by Sir Edmond Hillary, http://www.amazon.com/Polar-Dream-First-Expedition-Magnetic/dp/0939165457

Several years later she trekked again to the North Pole, this time with her husband Bill, then in his 60’s.  Now 73 and 85 respectively, they’ve been married 50 years, during which they’ve hiked and kayaked the remote regions of the planet and spent two years living beside wolves in the wild.  http://www.amazon.com/Three-Among-Wolves-Couple-Their/dp/1570613982 They’ve also lived with native peoples such as the Masai, Datoga, Berbers, and Bushman of Africa, and created a school program, Adventure Classrooms, which brings “the four corners of the world to children.”  They’ve presented their experiences to over a million kids at this point. www.adventureclassroom.org 

Her dream from childhood however was to cross the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, so she began planning for it with a 1,500 mile trek across Death Valley, then a 4,000 mile walk with camels across the Sahara.  In 2001, at the age of 63, Bill was 74, they fulfilled that dream with a 1,600 mile hike across the Gobi desert.  http://www.amazon.com/Walking-Gobi-Mile-trek-Across-Despair/dp/159485064X 

All three of her books get rave reviews on Amazon, and if you want to see what older people are capable of doing, pick up any of them.  When Helen heard that I had completed the PCT last year she said she sends copies of Polar Dream to all thru hikers, and promised to send a copy to Martinez.  I’m looking forward to a good read when I finish hiking Washington.

I asked Helen if she had any advice for people, and without hesitation, she answered, “Set your goals and go after them.”  Decide what you want to do and then, methodically, persistently, work to achieve whatever it is in life you want.  She and Bill still regularly hike the Cascades and have several trails they walk.  They set a goal for themselves to hike faster each time, and so far, they’ve bested themselves on every hike.  “Don’t stroll, get up a good sweat and make yourself breathe hard.”

There was so much more, twice kayaking 2,200 miles on the Amazon, a recent 900 mile hike from Morocco to Mali, Presidential medals, and having been named “One of the Great Explorers of the 20 Century” by National Geographic.  Wow!  Probably the most inspirational people I’ve ever met, she and Bill were both delightful, unassuming, genuine folks.  I received an invitation to visit them next time I’m in the Cascades, and that I will.   

It’s people like Helen and Bill Thayer that make me realize that the 60, 70, and 80 year olds I met on trail last year thru hiking the PCT, are not an anomoly, they’re becoming the norm.  Helen talked with a “you can do it” confidence, and she has the backbone to pull it off as well.  It made me realize we can accomplish those outrageous dreams we all carry.  Just set the goal and work for it. 

Tomorrow we hit trail again, this time heading across Glacier Peak Wilderness, some of the most beautiful mountains on the PCT.  

“God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild."  John Muir - Atlantic Monthly, January 1869.