Day 141, September 5: Mile 2448 to 2465 / Leavenworth
Start: Deception Lakes - Mile 2447.5
End: Stevens Pass/Leavenworth - Mile 2465.2
Miles: 17.7
Ascent: 4055 | Descent: 5098
I woke up to a gloomy morning, and it was very hard to get out of my tent. We had four main climbs to tackle for the day before getting into town, but luckily they were all shorter than some of the others we had faced recently in Washington. I completed the first one without too much trouble, other than feeling very sleepy. I’ve been drinking a lot of caffeine on trail lately, and I can feel that my tolerance and my need for it has greatly increased. Time to cut back a bit.
While I was filtering water before the second climb, Kevin caught up to me. We chatted for a bit and I got very cold sitting there. We agreed to meet again at the top of the next climb, which had some of the steepest elevation gain per mile of the entire trail at around 1200 ft per mile (the normal grade is 350 ft per mile or so), though luckily for only 0.6 miles. I had drank some caffeine by this point and felt it percolate in my brain, and I wanted to challenge myself on the climb. I set a stopwatch and finished it in under 20 minutes- 19:47 to be exact. Woo!
Kevin was at the top of the climb, and we marveled at how we only had 200 miles left to the Canadian border. The clouds were lifting slightly from the area, and we could start to see some gorgeous views below of lakes and tree-covered mountain ridges.
The rest of the day’s hiking was pretty uneventful. The remaining climbs came pretty easy, and we passed lots of pretty lakes. The itch to get into town and shower and do laundry was strong, and we hurried along.
Soon we reached the road at Stevens Pass. Kevin had chatted with some weekend hikers earlier on the trail, and they graciously gave us a ride into Leavenworth, a funny tourist town that is all Bavarian themed.
After our hitch dropped us off at our Airbnb, we started laundry right away and got showered and clean. After not doing proper laundry for over a week, I was ecstatic to have clean clothes. Once we were clean, Kevin and I went out for dinner and got tasty tacos and margaritas, and Cold Stone afterwards. I was asleep by 9pm.