PCT Day 164 – Sweet Baby Jeezu, the Last Nero

Cloudy Pass Junction (mile 2552, plus 6 miles to Hart Lake on the Holden fire alternate) to Stehekin (mile 2572 via Holden fire alternate and Stehekin ferry)

Starman and I are standing bemused at the registrar’s desk in Holden, WA – a small Lutheran retreat nestled in a valley above Lake Chalan, which has generously consented to allow hikers to detour through their resort in order to accommodate the Bannock Lake Fire Detour. The kindly woman behind the desk informs us in her gently lilting English accent that laundry is free. We are confused. But laundry is never free. Five months into the trail there are a few things I have learned and one of them is that laundry is never free. Except, apparently, in Holden where dreams do come true.

Showered and laundered we board the bumping meandering shuttle bus to Lucerne where we board the ferry to Stehekin—our last nero on the trail. Our last resupply package, headlamp charging station, town meal. Less than 100 miles to Manning Park, British Columbia. In a few days we will be crossing the border into Canada on foot, what an absurd thing to have done. We while away the afternoon sitting on the banks of Lake Chalan, chatting with other hikers, eating baked goods from the Stehekin Bakery, and staring across the blue waters of this great narrow lake. There is an intangible feeling in the air, electricity mixed with a coming sense of loss, an end and a celebration all wrapped into one confusing bundle of emotions. The hikers here, us here, there is a feeling that we’re going to make it. With all the odds against us and the miles between here and Mexico it finally seems possible that we might just make it to Canada.