![]() Somehow, I had this place completely to myself. They are like a child’s drawing of a mountaintop: crude and rough triangles stabbing the sky. The North Cascades are called “the American Alps” for good reason. The view was the proverbial mountains beyond mountains: Sentinel Peak, Mount Formidable, Gunsight Peak. The sun was taking its own sweet time as it headed peakward. I told them they were welcome to stay, but they had already set up camp a mile below, and eventually they split. They were bummed that, for some reason, they had been denied a permit for the site. As I was setting up camp, a pair of ladies I had been leapfrogging for days came by. It was an epic spot: a sweep of grass rising upslope to the rock heights that looked over the peak-scape. On my third night I had a permit for a stock camp at an out-of-the-way alpine meadow in the national recreation area. One night, I shared a camp with a pair of guys who had been trekking cross-country, and they mentioned crossing paths with a hunter who was stalking bear. New bear signage had been posted at most of the camps, and I had been denied a permit at one site due to bear activity there. There was lots of sign, too: a perfect pile of scat on the trail in one drainage, some clawed up young saplings in another. I was bequeathed a new trail name: “Cookie Monster.”)Īmong the backpackers, there was plenty of trail rumor of bear. (I had dawdled on the way in, and performed a bit of trail magic by handing out fresh-baked cookies to the thru-hikers finishing their final trail miles before the end of their long walk. The place was busy with weekend backpackers, trail runners out of Stehekin, and the tail end of the PCT thru-hikers. In the passes and the ridge tops, the last blueberries were still holding on-at the edge of dry, bursting with flavor. The larch were threatening to flip yellow, and the days were clear and warm. It was a beautiful autumn weekend on the east slope of the Stephen Mather Wilderness. It seemed like a small work of karma, to have saved a bear’s life with a spliff.Ī couple of weeks ago, I took my alone-time in the North Cascades, and I came home with what you might call the non-bear bear story. I do 10 to 12 miles a day, tops.īut the next day, hiking out of the mountains, I felt glad about the whole thing. (On this year’s trip, it was John Fowles’ slim volume, The Tree, which I can’t recommend enough). I sleep in and spend the mornings reading in some spot stream-side or grove-enclosed. Not that I’m up to anything close to an Anker-like expeditions. It’s the essential annual ritual to, as Conrad Anker says, “clean out the pipes.” Usually, it’s enough if I can scratch out a three-night, four-day trip. In a good year, I can pull off a five-nighter without the fam. ![]() One of the modest pleasures of my middle-age dad-life is an annual solo backpacking trip that, despite all other responsibilities and interests, I’ve been able to keep sacrosanct. ![]()
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