PCT Section 10: Snoqualmie Pass to Stevens Pass
After spending two days resting and refueling in Seattle, my sister took me back up to the trail at Snoqualmie Pass! The following section would take me 4 days to complete, and was 71 miles total. I started north from Snoqualmie with a tough climb up towards the Kendall Katwalk, the narrow band of trail carved out of a cliff that you see below.
After crossing the Kendall Katwalk, the PCT stayed up high on ridgelines for the rest of the day. This gave me some beautiful scenery to take in as I entered the Alpine Lakes Wilderness! True to its name, this wilderness had a new lake around every corner and up every climb. Here are a few different lakes I saw on the first day of this section.
I ended up stopping short of my goal on that first day, camping after only about 15 miles. I hadn’t factored in how tough the hiking would be, with over 5,000 feet of elevation gain on a day where I didn’t start hiking until 10am (most days I was hiking by 7am). Luckily for me, that set me up to see this dramatic view of Spectacle Lake in the early light on the following morning!
One of my favorite things about the lens (Fujinon 18-135mm) that I brought on the PCT was its versatility. I took the above image and the below image from the exact same spot! These two photos are completely different styles and shot at different focal lengths, but I was able to see and capture both of these because of the lens I had with me.
After that viewpoint overlooking Spectacle Lake, the day quickly became a slog through endless switchbacks. I dropped 2,000 feet into a valley on switchbacks, then climbed over 2,000 feet up switchbacks, then dropped another 2,5000 feet until I finally made it to a good camp site. The only thing that broke up that monotony was this image of the moon setting over a mountain, and a breathtakingly cold swim in an alpine lake (that I didn’t take any pictures of).
Day 3 started off with a climb towards Deep Lake and Cathedral Pass. Deep Lake was beautiful, but because it was very overcast I focused on smaller scenes with my photography. I really ended up liking this shot of a log sticking up out of the lake, with an awesome reflection that was only possible because of how calm the water was.
Cathedral Pass ended up being fairly unremarkable, so I kept pushing onward into the next valley. Up and down, up and down. This stretch really pushed and tested me physically, between brutal heat and the endless climbing and descending. In the afternoon I stopped to cool off and swim at another lake, when the unthinkable happened; I dropped my phone in the lake. I immediately dove down and was able to retrieve it from the bottom of the lake, but at that point the damage was done. My phone was completely dead.
In our everyday lives it’s obvious how much a dead phone would impact me, but on trail I still acutely felt the loss. Not only did I lose all of my phone pictures and journals from the past few days (thankfully not more because of iCloud backups), I also lost my primary navigation tool and way of communicating with people off trail. FarOut (or Guthook) is an app used by thru-hikers for navigation, as well as determining water availability, campsite locations, and more. I thankfully had a paper map with me, so I wasn’t completely blind to what was ahead, but it still made managing how much water to carry and understanding where I was much more difficult. I was able to send a message to my sister, who was picking me up from Stevens Pass the following day, with my Garmin Inreach Mini gps device. Even with these workarounds, it still was a shock to the system to not have a working phone!
The image below is from Glacier Lake, where I camped on the third night.
On the last day, my only priority was putting in the miles to get to Stevens Pass. I knew my sister was coming to pick me up, but we could only communicate by sending satellite messages through my Garmin. The weather was threatening to rain all morning, a great reflection of my mood.
I was taking a picture of some distant mountains when I noticed this little pika running around near me! I hadn’t put much emphasis on photographing wildlife to this point on the PCT, mainly because I hadn’t seen much, but I took this close up opportunity to capture an image of this little creature scurrying around the rock field it calls home.
I met two hikers on this final day that I would end up hiking with until Canada: Grandsire and Yo-Yo. When we reached the top of the final climb, the top of Stevens Pass Ski Resort, they got cell service for the first time in a few days. I asked to borrow their phone, and I was able to call my sister and my parents to let them know what had happened to my phone and when I would be getting down to the road.
After having a massive burger at the resort, my sister arrived to pick me up and take me back to Seattle! We went straight to the Apple store to get a new phone, and then went back to her house to spend the night. She drove me back to the trail the following morning, where I started the second to last section of trail before Canada. I can’t even begin to say how much it meant to have her help throughout my time on trail, especially in this section. Thanks again Sarah!