July 20, 2024. Day 13 of trip.
Today’s suffering was different than anticipated. Unanticipated suffering has far greater character-building potential than anticipated suffering, so I suppose that makes today a “great day” in the character-building-department.
We are currently staying in Concrete, Washington at a really neat location called the Bakerview Getaway HipCamp. A HipCamp is kind of like AirBNB for RV sites. Typically a HipCamp is owned by someone who loves to RV themselves and has a large area of land with a suitable place for an RV to park. For a nightly fee, you can rent a site from the owner.
The Bakerview Getaway HipCamp has a large lot that has electric hookups and a view of Mount Baker. We have the entire one-acre grassy field to ourselves which is outstanding. Sitting outside here in the peace and quiet is so nice. Heidi told me that this is exactly what she envisions for our “second act”.
Today we awoke at 5AM (anticipated suffering) with a goal to depart our HipCamp and get to the Cascade Pass trailhead in North Cascades National Park early enough to beat the heat. The kids were not eager to get moving, but after a little prodding, they got up. We finished breakfast and headed East on Hwy 20. The first 27 miles were nicely paved, but the last 13 miles were washboard gravel road. At the start of the gravel there was a sign that said, “Warning, unimproved road, no signs.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sign previously which told me that there were no signs. (It was a lie as there were several additional warning signs ahead).
Even though we arrived at the large parking lot by 7:30AM , it was completely full. Fortunately, there was still room to park on the shoulder just before the parking lot, so, after turning around, we found a parking spot and were already heading the correct direction for departure. You never know when you might need to evacuate. Always be prepared!
After a quick stop at the (reasonably nice) pit toilet, we headed up on our hike.
I say headed up because there was a significant elevation gain in the 3.7 miles to the Cascade Pass Viewpoint. Most of the hike was nicely shaded, and there were a couple of spots where we got to hike across a glacier. At one point we looked up and saw a mountain goat with its baby. My fitbit didn’t really keep track well as we were mostly in between mountain peaks which made the GPS not work, and the step counter was thrown off as I was using trekking poles. When we arrived at the viewpoint, my watch said we still had another 0.9 miles to go, so it was a nice surprise.
They had a “poop only” composting vault toilet at the viewpoint and in order to use it, you had to lift the lid, sit down, and do your business without any surrounding walls or privacy. There were also a significant number of yellow jackets at the vault toilet. We didn’t see anyone attempt to use it. There is a helpful sign duct-taped to the lid of the toilet with instructions, the most important of which was “NO PEE.”
It reminds me of the old joke, “We don’t swim in your toilet, so don’t pee in our pool.” Or the alternative, “We don’t pee in our toilet, so don’t swim in our pool.” Regardless, it’s the only toilet I’ve seen in my life with a sign prohibiting the usage of said toilet for micturition.
The view from cascade pass is outstanding as you are surrounded by glaciers and overlooking the Pelton basin.
It was only 1045 AM, but we’d been up almost 6 hours and were hungry so we ate an early lunch. Annalise and Heidi were ready to head back, but Dexter and I wanted to continue up the Sahale glacier. It was only another 2 miles to the glacier, so we figured we’d be there and back in a little over an hour. Our plan was to hike up to the glacier, then return to Cascade Pass, and either meet the girls there or back at the car.
Dexter and I got about 10 minutes up the trail when we came upon a rather large group of hikers (about 30) who were all headed downhill in a hurry. This was very strange and extremely disconcerting as we had only come across a handful of hikers on our journey thus far. Why were they all hiking rapidly downhill in a large group? What did they know that we didn’t?
One of the downhill hikers stopped and told us, “You need to turn around, you are going the wrong direction.”
“Wrong direction?” I asked
“Yes. The trail runners up ahead just brought a message from the park ranger. The road to Cascade Pass is being closed at Noon due to a forest fire. If we don’t get out of here by 12, we will be trapped.”
Nobody seemed to know if the forest fire was threatening us and we needed to head away from the threat, or if the fire was threatening the road itself and we needed to head towards the threat and hope to drive past the fire (hopefully not through the fire) in our vehicles.
At this point it was about 11 AM, and we were over 4 miles from our car. We weren’t sure if we could make it to our car by noon, and if we did, we didn’t know if the road would be open.
We discovered that the 30 hikers were all evacuating the mountain as fast as their legs could carry them. We decided to join the group.
We hustled back to the Cascade Pass Viewpoint (where we had left Heidi and Annalise), and discovered that they had gotten the same news and were anxiously awaiting our return. When I say “anxiously awaiting” what I mean is, “on the verge of panicking.” Heidi was not happy to have our family in two separate hiking groups with the threat of a wildfire looming.
Once everyone gathered at the pass, there were about 50-60 hikers trying to make it down quickly. I have never seen a large group of hikers move with this degree of speed and determination. Fire (even the threat of fire) is a very effective motivational tool under the correct circumstances. We hiked the entire 3.7 miles without taking a single stop and made it back to the car just after noon.
We jumped in the Highlander and headed downhill, not even stopping to take off our hiking boots. We made it about 300 yards when the traffic stopped completely. This did not seem good. We couldn’t see any fire, but why was the traffic stopped? Had they shut the gate and trapped us on the side of the mountain?
I got out of the Highlander and went down to investigate. I discovered that someone had driven their Pleasure Way camping van into a ditch and they were blocking the road. The stopped traffic was not due to a closed gate, it was due to a vehicle stopped across the road. The driver of the Pleasure Way had attempted a 3-point turn and ended up high-centering over the edge of the road. There was no way that this van could be moved.
There is a forest fire. We are trying to evacuate. We can’t evacuate.
This is firmly in “unanticipated suffering” territory.
The nose of the camping van was 2/3 of the way across the road and there was a Volkswagen Tiguan SUV parked on the shoulder. The gap between the nose of the camping van and the side of the SUV was too narrow for any vehicle to pass.
A brief aside.
I went to Auburn Academy for grades 10-12. Auburn is a Seventh Day Adventist boarding high school in Washington State. At the ripe old age of 15, I moved out of my parents’ home in Tillamook, Oregon, drove 233 miles, and moved into a dorm with about 100 other teenage boys.
Anyone (particularly boys) who lives in a dorm for any period of time will eventually have the opportunity to participate in various pranks. I’m not willing to admit I personally ever participated in any pranks when I lived in a dorm, but I am aware of several pranks that occurred while I lived in the dorm at Auburn Academy. A particularly memorable prank occurred late at night when everyone (at least everyone over the age of 18) was asleep. Somehow, in the middle of the night, the car belonging to the boys’ dean mysteriously disappeared. The next morning, when he went to find his car, it was completely gone. After a bit of searching, he discovered that his car had magically reappeared in a very unusual location: on the roof of the cafeteria. The only thing he could figure was that a group of boys had managed to lift his car up, carry it across campus, and then somehow hoist it on the roof. I guess we will never know what actually happened, but this memory gave me an idea.
Back to today.
By this time, a small crowd (maybe 10 people) had gathered and were trying to figure out what to do. The Pleasure Way Camping van was completely stuck, and weighs about 15,000 lbs but the Volkswagen Tiguan wasn’t stuck and it only weighs 4,000 or 5,000 lbs. What if we gathered a group of guys and lifted it out of the way?
I recruited 3 other guys so we could attempt to move the SUV out of the way. I tried to recruit more help, but no one else seemed interested in assisting us.
Mr. Rodgers famously said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” I think the adult version of this goes something like, “When things go wrong, you can help or you can watch. Be a helper, not a watcher.”
The other three “helpers” and I gathered at the back of the vehicle: one at each rear wheel and two at the back bumper. Everyone else stood around and watched. I was on the right wheel and one of the guys on the bumper counted “1-2-3” and then we all lifted and heaved. We managed to move the rear and of the SUV about 3 inches. This was no glorious “Lift it to the roof of the cafeteria” but once we got it to move a little, we knew we could get it moved out of the way. After a few more lifts, heaves, and grunts, we made a lane just wide enough for cars to pass.
I raced back to Heidi and the kids, loaded myself back into the Highlander, and headed down the mountain again. We managed to squeeze pass the disabled vehicle without scraping our paint on the way by.
There was nothing we could do about the disabled camping van, it needed a flatbed tow truck, and the only way a truck of that size could make it up is if all of the vehicles parked on the shoulder were cleared first. One of the other “helpers” volunteered to call for help once we were somewhere that had cell phone service.
We made it down off the mountain, and about 6 miles later came to a gate with a sign that said, “Road closed due to fire.” Fortunately they were only blocking people from driving back up the road we had just gone down, they were still allowing people to evacuate. It was then that we learned that it was the road that was in danger of the fire, not the trail we had been hiking on. We had been racing down the mountain to get past the fire before it crossed the road.
After returning to the rig, I looked it up, and we were impacted by the “Pincer 2” fire which is a fire which was started by lightning 2 days ago with a location of “less than 1 mile” from the road we drove. We felt very glad to be away from the fire once we reached safety.
After returning to our rig, we were hot, sweaty and dusty, so we walked down to the Skagit River to rinse off. Heidi and Annalise got their feet wet, but that was about it. Glacier run-off is cold! Dexter and I both got fully submerged and got the true glacial ice-bath experience. (Anticipated suffering)
We ate an early supper of Pizza made on our Ooni oven. We recently picked up some frozen Pizza dough in Birch Bay and we added toppings and baked it tonight. The Ooni always cooks better with thin crust, but this crust kept springing back and was too thick. I had to make the toppings nearly burn in order to make the dough fully cook.
After we ate supper, we watched the online Sunnyside church service from today. Pastor Kevin preached about Romans 5, and talked about voluntary homelessness, backpacking, and suffering. All told, it seemed like the sermon was aimed directly at us. At one point he said, “Suffering doesn’t necessarily come from God, but God can help strengthen us when we suffer.”
Dexter interjected, “Yeah, suffering doesn’t come from God, about 90% of suffering comes from dad.”
Tomorrow is a big travel day as we go from Concrete, WA to Leavenworth, WA. My RV Trip wizard app says it will be about 3 ½ hours of driving. I’ll need to stop for diesel along the way, and we are planning a Walmart stop in Monroe, WA where we will eat lunch and also do some grocery shopping.
We are staying 2 nights in Leavenworth (at a KOA) then 3 nights in Silverwood, which means 5 nights in a row with full hookups and access to laundry. After that, we have 5 nights of complete boondocking in a row. Tonight is our 4th night without full hookups in a row, but we’ve had electricity for the last 2 nights, just no water or sewer hookups. I’m sure we’ll do fine with 5 nights of boondocking but Heidi is feeling stressed. As long as we use paper products for dishes, and only take “Navy” showers, we should not run out of water or tank space. Getting the kids to engage in the process of minimizing water usage in the RV is challenging, but I think they are starting to figure it out. If we do run out of water or tank space, it’s just another opportunity to build character. Anyone want to take bets on whether or not we run out of water or tank space? Time will tell.
SAOTD: Heidi, who was stranded at the Cascade Pass Viewpoint with a forest fire looming, and Tim had just headed down the trail in the opposite direction of the car.
Postscript. (September 28, 2024) The Pincer 2 fire burned about 211 acres of forest. The road we evacuated due to fire was remained closed for the next 65 days, re-opening on September 20, 2024.