Day 126, part 1

Steven’s Pass to Mazama

PCT Miles: skipped from 2466.8 to 2624.7 (157.9 miles) due to Shoofly, Miner’s Complex, Pioneer, Flat Creek and Easy fires.

Total Miles: 2624.7 (4199.5km)

The section that I had to skip today was the most hurtful of all the skipped miles of the trail. Washington has been absolutely gorgeously incredibly beautiful. Challenging with its steep hills, rainy and cold, but also very rewarding with magnificent views of lakes and mountains. Maybe it’s because the wound is too recent, but I feel like Washington is the only section of the PCT that I would like to do again, in whole. Who knows?

I had an entirely free morning! At 6am I was already eating the hot breakfast at the hotel like an animal 🦔. At 7 was at the hotel’s spa, alternating between using the jacuzzi with few laps on the cold swimming pool 🏊. Around 10am I was already fully packed and slowly walking towards the bus station in the “old downtown” of Wenatchee.

My first stop was at an amazing book store. I spent more than an hour browsing through the store until finally I exchanged my Adventures of Tom Sawyer (I absolutely couldn’t read it: I didn’t understand a thing after reading 10 pages) for Battlestar Galactica. After that. it was time for second breakfast in a nice coffee shop!

From there I ended up at a nice market hall with a bit of everything: food, coffee, local art, breweries. Time for another break!

At 2:30pm I finally got into the bus to Pateros, where I would then take a bus to Twisp and finally take a final bus to Mazama, where I need to find a shuttle/trail angel to bring me to the trailhead. Well, one step at a time (not literally, unfortunately).

We saw one of the fires that were ahead of us from very, very close. Even the driver was clearly a bit uncomfortable to be driving kind of towards the fire. In the end everything was fine and it was actually cool to see the helicopters 🚁 attacking the fire and creating the containment lines.

On this first bus we were 4 hikers. After arriving in Pateros, we became 8, since four other hikers arrived while we were waiting the bus to Twisp. We, PCT hikers, were the only passengers on the next buses, finally arriving in Manzama a bit after 6pm. Almost four hours of bus rides today 😮‍💨.

All the eight of us had the same plan: go to this “Lion’s Den” place in that we heard about to spend the night and go to the Hart’s Pass trailhead tomorrow morning. So we all went together to Lion’s Den. And that was a cool place to be!