Schaefer Lake — Thursday, Jun. 24, 2004

Central Cascades > Stevens Pass - East

Kind of a ""Coleman weekend"", if you understand that ""Coleman"" is our term for when something goes wrong camping.:) The begining trailhead is well marked and it is pretty easy to get to the log jam. After that? Well, it's not. That 20-25 foot crossing the small log to get to the log jam is over a very fast moving deep river. Our more nimble packers went up and strung a line to assit in crossing. Then on the other side after we found the correct trail we headed off into heavy overgrowth that sometimes made it guesswork to know if you were still on path. A couple of mudholes to cross while being buzzed by bugs. Then we headed up the trail which was pretty steep and narrow. It made us wonder how horses could get around up here. There are two creeks to cross that provide remarkably great tasting water. We never made it to the lake as after 5 hours we gave it up for the night. We slept on the trail without tents as we had about 24 inches of flat ground, near one of the creeks and enjoyed the three separate rain storms that fell on us. We headed back down in the morning and our nimble packer carried across everyone's pack across the log jam which at this point had ""Pysched"" me out. I instead with two others went up the trail to the horse ford spot. We lashed rope around our waists and headed up river in about 2 feet of rushing water. We advanced 4/5 across the river in 2 foot deep water and attempted the last fifth by being up a ways above the horse trail. So we swam the last bit and the current pulled me just past the trail. It was good we had a rope as it was a much stronger current than expected. I shudder to think what would happen to someone whom fell off the log jam. We then finished the hike a day early, changed clothes and headed into Levenworth for a hotel with a pool. :) All in all, a bit battered and bug bit, but sitting on a lounge chair next to a very inviting heated pool soaking in the sunshine made it another of my many ""Coleman Adventure"" weekends my wife has come to know me by. She came up for the hotel. :) This was my first hike in about 8 years. I learned to not trust the word ""Moderate"" to mean what I thought it meant and elevation change is important to a middle aged man.:) I am a good sized person (6'7"" 300lbs.)of average fitness and with a full pack I am a load. What some of you found easy, was pretty hard for me. I had three teen agers with me and we decided to ""egg"" the author of ""100 hikes"" house the first chance we got.