PCT Section 12: Stehekin to Canada
I took my final resupply stop on the PCT in the town of Stehekin, a charming town that is pretty inaccessible from the outside world. When I got back on trail the following day, I was hiking through North Cascades National Park. Unfortunately, the PCT doesn’t really see any of the highlights of the park. It was 15 miles of exposed uphill hiking; I was sweating and struggling with the weight of my pack that was loaded up with food. The second day was much more exciting as I crossed the road at Rainy Pass and continued up into high elevations! A cold front had moved in, and there were low hanging clouds that made for interesting lighting. I took the image below on my way up to Cutthroat Pass.
Hiking over Cutthroat Pass was the first time I remember seeing larch trees while on the PCT! These trees were exciting to me because they’re a coniferous tree that turn yellow and lose their needles each winter, unlike other coniferous trees. The lighter green trees in the image below are all larches!
In the high alpine sections of this stretch, there were views in every direction.
All of these images have been from the same morning! And each one is looking a different way.
I was able to hike 24 miles on day 2 fairly easily because of the cool weather. As I got into camp I was feeling frustrated by pieces of gear being dirty and starting to break. That evening one of my shoelaces had ripped. My tent and pillow were really dirty, I had lost a pair of socks in Stehekin, and my sun hoodie had holes in both shoulders. It truly felt like I was pushing my limits in order to make it to the Canadian border.
The next morning I woke up as my friends Yo-Yo and Grandsire made it to where I had camped. The three of us continued on into a cloud, climbing higher and higher. The clouds started to part just as we reached the top of our climb, leaving me in awe of the beauty I was surrounded by! I focused in on some of the smaller details around me, like the light hitting this ridge of larch trees.
As the clouds continued to break, they left haze in the atmosphere, creating an ethereal effect on the distant mountains.
I took a lot of pictures through the next few miles, constantly needing to stop to take in my surroundings.
After another long day I made it to camp. It was the third day of this stretch, and I knew that I would make it to Canada the next day! I fell asleep thinking about what it would feel like touching the monument after 1,000 miles of hiking.
From camp I found a composition that I really liked of mountains in the distance. I liked it so much that I took the same image in the evening and the following morning! I still can’t decide which I like more, and I decided to include both in this blog because they complement each other.
On the morning of the fourth day, I woke up to smoke blanketing the valleys around me. I knew there were wildfires happening all over Washington, but all I could do was keep hiking and hope that none of them were too close to me.
After living in the West for a few years I had learned to recognize the look of smoke in the air, as well as how it affects light. While wildfire smoke can be ugly or sad to see, it also can create really interesting light for photography. As I entered an area that had burned in a previous year, I was struck by the signs of fire all around me. Not only were the trees blackened, but the pink flower growing in this meadow is called fireweed because it tends to grow back so quickly after fires. All of that combined with the smoky light from active fires made for a beautiful image portraying fire and it’s effect on the landscape.
The other thing I hoped to find with smoke in the air was rays of light! Sometimes light shining through atmosphere, such as fog or smoke, can create beams of light like you see in this picture.
On this day I only had two things on my mind: Canada and fires. I know I’m talking about the fires a lot, but it really felt bittersweet for the views to be so smoky on the day I would reach the northern terminus of the PCT. This next image shows how much smoke can settle into valleys.
As we approached the highest point on the PCT in Washington, I saw what was contributing to some of the smoke. There was a small active fire 5 miles or so west of the trail. You can see it in the distance, where plumes of smoke are coming out of the trees.
Despite all of the worry around fires, Yo-Yo, Grandsire, and I pushed on until we reached the Canadian border and the northern terminus of the PCT! We arrived in the evening on August 29, my 66th day on trail. We spent a half hour at the terminus taking pictures and trying to take in the moment. Then we picked up our packs, and started the walk back south 3 miles to where we would camp. Because Canada wasn’t allowing entrance into the country on the PCT, we had to hike back south 30 miles to the nearest road in the US.
The final push to get to a road was a crazy adventure of it’s own. In my last blog I mentioned that the road to Hart’s Pass had been closed because of a landslide. I was able to work out a detour with my sister where she could pick my friends and I up from a different trailhead and drive us back to Seattle. On day 5 of this section we started that detour, leaving the PCT to head east for 10 miles on the Pacific Northwest Trail. It wasn’t too bad of a climb to start the day, but as we came up over a pass we were shocked to see an active fire up close. This fire was within a mile of the trail we’d be hiking down. My friends and I quickly discussed our options, and decided that because of the wind direction and size of the fire that we should be safe to continue on our planned route. We were hiking with urgency, wanting to put as much distance between us and the fire as possible.
We stopped for lunch where we reached a trail intersection, feeling that we were safe from the fire at this point. Our struggles weren’t quite over yet though; we got lost for an hour and a half that afternoon because of a poorly marked trail that had been rerouted. When we finally made it to camp, I looked back to the north and was shocked by the size of the plume of the smoke coming from the fire we had seen earlier that day. It seemed like it had more than doubled in size in less than 12 hours. It was an unnerving way to spend our last night on trail. Thankfully we woke up the following morning without the fire seeming any closer, and we hiked the final 14 miles to reach the road where my sister picked us up! She met us with watermelon and muffins, a perfect treat to celebrate the end of our journey.
I want to take the time to thank you for getting this far and following along with my stories from the PCT! Writing these blogs has been an important project for me to document my experiences and share all of my images from the PCT. If any particular images from this series stood out to you, consider purchasing a print or the photo book that I created to commemorate my time on trail! Now it’s on to my next adventure: working as a backcountry caretaker on the Long Trail in Vermont.