On a backpacking trip to the remote village of Stehekin at the far north end of Lake Chelan, once we were set up at the Old Orchard Camp, we wanted to explore the area a bit more before packing up and heading on. Up until a few years ago, one could hike the entire distance from the town of Chelan to Stehekin, but floods had wiped out portions of the trail and a major bridge between Chelan and Moore Point, making it impossible to hike now. Hikers currently must rely on the ferry to drop them off somewhere north of the washed out area, and that was what we had done (see Hike #42 – Backpacking Lake Chelan – Chelan to Moore Point, Old Orchard Camp). We decided to hike along the Lakeshore Trail south toward the washed out area through a forest that had also been ravaged by wild fires a few years before (oh the power of Nature!). We had peek-a-boo views of the beautiful lake where we had just traveled by ferry as we looked through the tall, charred stumps.
The underbrush is growing back thick and lush since the fires, so there was an abundance of beautiful wild flowers in bloom.
After several miles of hiking along this trail, we were met by several groups of AmeriCorps workers, no doubt hiking back to their base camp at Moore Point. After a long, hot day of pulling noxious weeds from along the trail and property borders, you could tell they were glad to be heading back to camp. They looked tired. We hiked for several miles before turning around and hiking the distance back to camp ourselves.
Sixty Before Sixty 