Adventures With Wildlife

Day 158 - September 10

Mile: 2546.6 to 2565.3 (18.7)

up/down: 2500/4900 feet

What is our most feared animal on the trail? Mountain Lion? Nah, haven't seen one and didn't expect to. Bear? Didn't see one of these either. Marmots, squirrels, pikas? Nope, nope nope. The most feared animal is the mouse, or mice as they usually attack in packs. Last night was a case in point. Shortly after dark, Hummingbird is sitting up and shining her headlamp around. At the foot of our tent - INSIDE - is a mouse scurrying about trying to get in the food bags. We open the doors and shoo him out. He must have come in when one of us went outside to use a tree. We lay back down and after a few minutes we hear crawling around the outside, one somehow makes it over the top of the tent and down the other side, others testing and probing looking for a weakness in our defenses. Sleep comes hard with all the little bastards skittering about.  We had heard parts of Washington on the trail were famous for hiker smart mice, but this is ridiculous. A little after midnight, Hummingbird is up again with her light and there's another one IN THE TENT! Son of a b****. We get this one out too and search all over for a hole in our shelter they could get in. Nothing. We have no clue how the little Houdini did it. We keep them out for the rest of the night but sleep is interrupted regularly. Just what we needed, a short sleep night after so many difficult hiking days...

I am up at dawn so we get a little earlier start. We have a mostly blue sky day and are grateful. Up we go to Suiattle Pass and some nice views. 

 

 

We spend the rest of the day descending into a huge glacier carved canyon along the Agnes River that will take us to our final resupply stop at the little community of Stehekin on Lake Chelan. Stehekin is truly away from it all - to get there means hike in, a float plane, or a 50 mile ferry ride.  We are camped 4 miles out from the bus stop at a ranger station where we can catch a shuttle the 11 miles to town from the trail. We will go in first thing in the morning and hopefully get a room at the lodge for the evening. Our stuff is at the post office which is closed on Sunday so we'll have to sit it out until Monday morning. The rest certainly won't hurt as we are tired, really really tired. We are under 100 miles to go now.