Gratitude of the Day: I’m thankful for being nearly done, hoping and praying all goes well in this last section of the trail.
I set my alarm for 5am to try to get a good jump on the day and give myself time to get the planned 24 miles done and allow my self breaks throughout the day. But, I hit snooze because I was still tired from the day before. I still made it out of camp first and at 6:20 to start the 8 mile uphill out of the Siuattle River valley. The climb was typical Washington, side hilling through bushes and still having to climb over downed trees across the trail. It was slow going but by 10:30 I had made it to the top and the clouds had burned off so I got spectacular views of Glacier Peak before descending into the Stehekin Valley. Cool Cat caught up to me and told me he was going to try to push all the way into Stehekin today and catch the 6:15 shuttle that takes you into town from the ranger station.
After calculating the math, I had a shot at making that shuttle too, it would mean I’d have to take little breaks to get the nearly 29 miles done by 6. After thinking about it, I figured I’d push the miles so I could get chores done tonight in town and make tomorrow less hectic and stressful when I had originally planned to get into town and get my resupply box. Fortunately, the rest of the day was a massive downhill and I could keep a pace of 3 mph for the rest of the day with no problem. I stopped only twice today and that was to filter water. Over all I hiked 28.7 miles with only taking 30 minutes to stop, it’s amazing what the body can do. I walked by the 100 miles to go marker, took a picture and kept going. I reached the shuttle stop at 5pm on the dot giving myself and hour and 15 minutes to sit at the ranger station and relax. Cool cat showed up shortly after and the rumor was that more the the Salty Butts were going to push to get in too. The shuttle showed up and only Cool Cat and I made it into town. Once there the general store opened for us to buy some cold beverages and snacks and we immediately started to charge our battery banks for the next section to the Canadian border. We sat on the deck of the Stehekin Lodge listening to the boats in their slips, enjoy the stars and getting WiFi for the first time in a week. We camped at the Lakeview Campground and had plans to get up early to finish our chores of laundry and showers.
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