Stehekin & NF Bridge Creek - Oct 2025
My sister Cathy was in town visiting with Mom in Warm Beach, part of a trip to get some things in order for Mom. We had a nice day out in Stanwood and La Conner, including our favorite burger place in Stanwood, Mammoth Burgers.
Since Cathy was here for more than a week, Beck and I proposed that we all spend a few days in Stehekin, a place I always thought she and her husband Jack would like to experience the remote oasis. We scrambled to find lodging, and with the main lodge booked up, we reserved one of the cabins managed by John and Patty Wilsey; we had stayed in their McGregor Cabin a few years ago, and this time chose the Cedar Cabin given its very convenient location walking distance from The Bakery and The Garden.
We also took advantage of the new-to-us Stehekin Ferry, which offers a more convenient 1PM departure time, and a shorter trip, given that it launches from Fields Landing, several miles uplake from Chelan.
The new-ish catamaran ferry makes the trip from Fields Landing to Stehekin in about an hour and a half, depending on how many, if any, stops it makes along the way. We were fortunate that it went directly to Stehekin, and there were less than 10 passengers total. It offers free coffee and water and the crew was helpful and courteous. I’d recommend this over the traditional Lake of the Lake Ferry if you’re making more than a day trip uplake.
We landed in Stehekin at 2:30, and saw our rental vehicle, a 00’s GMC Yukon conveniently parked at the dock; the vehicle was part of the cabin rental, which is great when there’s several of you and you don’t have to rent the side-by-sides or bikes for every time you want to get around. Plus it encourages you to explore the area a bit more, though there aren’t many miles of roads. Gas is $7.90 per gallon, which we paid when we refilled it at the end of our trip.
We stopped at the cabin and unloaded and walked across the road to The Garden, a key source of fresh food and other natural goods, and a popular tourist spot.
When we were on the ferry, I struck up conversation with another passenger, and she mentioned whether we were looking forward to seeing the kokanee, as she was. I had heard ‘kokanee’ before and knew it was a salmon, but didn’t know anything else about it. But since she mentioned it, I thought we should go to a spot along the Stehekin and see what we can find.
The last time we were in Stehekin in 2020 for my birthday, we found a spot along the river in a side channel/eddy that we could sit in chairs and enjoy our beverages. We went back there a couple of times because it was right along the main river channel, which was flowing a lot more in late July than it was now in early October. We drove to the same spot and was surprised at how low the water was this late in the season. We walked down into the dried channel and immediately spotted relatively fresh bear prints among the other shoeprints of other visitors.
We also found a few kokanee in the low water in the channel, swimming in what appeared to be their final spawning area, and a place for them to die, as salmon do. Kokanee are land-locked freshwater sockeye salmon. They occur in many areas of the world; it’s thought that they were a product when ice melt 15,000 years ago formed a series of freshwater lakes, and some salmon went to sea, while others remained in the freshwater lakes. They are small; the ones we saw were mainly in the 9-12 inch range. Near the end of their life and during spawning, the males will get their characteristic hooked jaw and turn a bright red; the females will also go red.
We continued our drive upriver toward High Bridge to familiarize Cathy with the drive that she’ll return on after she drops us off for our backpacking trip in a couple of days. High Bridge is end of the drivable section road in the area and terminates at a high bridge over the river. From there, we could see schools of kokanee — hundreds of them — swimming about.
We headed back to the cabin and fixed dinner and enjoyed the sunset.
Come morning, we were eager to introduce Cathy to the Stehekin Bakery, a world-renowned oasis of yummy goodness. It’s a must-stop for PCT hikers to refuel and stock up on day-old goodies before returning to the trail at High Bridge. We over-bought, of course, but that just meant leftovers.
We continued our tour and hit up the usual highlights, including Rainbow Falls, the old Stehekin School, and the side-hike that takes you to a ‘secret’ water hole that is apparently used as an emergency water source for wildfires, I guess? We visited the pool in our last visit, though the trail has degraded a bit since then and/or they’re discouraging casual hikers from visiting it. Also, the plastic pipe and pipe hangers were new since 2020, probably reworked because of the demand for water for the huge Pioneer fire last year.
Rainbow Falls is very dramatic; you don’t really grasp how tall they are until you put a person next to it.
We returned to the cabin after our day of sight-seeing, and Cathy prepared another meal for us — she bought a ready-to-make taco kit from Costco. If you visit Stehekin, you need to account for your food; there’s a restaurant at the lodge, and you can make reservations up at the Stehekin Ranch, but there’s no grocery store. Every time we’ve been there, we’ve brought our own provisions in a cooler and prepared our meals, as we’ve rented lodging that included a kitchen. There are also several campgrounds for tent camping, often used by thru-hikers as they get cleaned up and get their resupplies from the post office
Monday morning was our day for Beck and me to start our overnight backpacking trip to the North Fork Bridge Creek and then out to the Bridge Creek trailhead along SR-20. Funny thing is that as the crow flies, Bridge Creek and SR-20 is only 12 miles from Stehekin. The route we were taking was about 28 miles, including an out-and-back up the North Fork.
After another morning at the Bakery, we bought a day-old pecan roll that was conveniently plastic-wrapped, ideal for a backpacking snack. We drove up to High Bridge and unloaded and started on our way. We took the actual PCT route instead of the slightly more direct road route, knowing that Howard Lake was only about a mile from the trailhead, a few hundred feet above High Bridge. Howard Lake was a gem with the sun rising.
The fall colors were popping in this section of the trail; it was a pleasant reminder of how beautiful fall hikes can be, even without the golden larches three thousand feet above us. The trail was generally easy-going, with a few more ups than downs, as we had a couple of thousand feet to gain to get to camp. Most of the trail was in the forest, with a few peeks down to the river far below, or up and down the valley.
We had about 11 miles to cover to get to Grizzly Creek Camp, the last National Park campsite on the North Fork Bridge Creek trail. In that 11 miles and about five hours of trail time, we only ran into a couple dayhiking out of Stehekin. We considered stopping short and camping at Walker Park horse camp, which is quite built-out with hitching posts and a corral, but found the campsites to be too secluded and lacking views, so we continued to Grizzly.
Once at Grizzly, we had our pick of sites, though the sites were spread out quite a bit, so it took us a while to check out all the sites and their separate eating areas. We picked the one with marginally better views and relatively close to the pit toilet. We set up our tent and headed off up-valley to get better views of the North Fork cirque below Logan and other prominent peaks to our northwest.
It was getting close to sunset, so we were on the clock and pretty tired from our trip to camp; we hiked almost two miles up the trail. Along the way, we found many emerging fungi, several I had never seen, and few even Beck hadn’t encountered. Beck is a fungi enthusiast, and has gone on a guided fungi walk and is always excited to find new specimens or even sample familiar ones.
Most of the way, the views up the valley were obscured by forest, but it did break out into meadows. We reached a point where we broke out, but knew the trail continued another mile or more to even better views, but decided to call it, take our pictures, and return to camp before it got too dark.
When we got back to camp, probably around 6PM, Beck found that her camp sandal had been chomped on and chewed. Based on the tooth marks being at least a couple of inches apart, this was a sizeable animal, and our best guess is that it was a bear.
Soon after, Beck walked to the far side of the tent and gave out probably the biggest gasp I've ever heard from her with a big 'Noooo!!!!'....so I went around and saw that the critter had torn a big section out of the tent fly and left a bite and slobber on the fabric.
We left absolutely no food in our camp, as we took it with us when we hiked up to the cirque knowing that this part of the park generally has its share of critters. Thankfully we didn't really need the fly and the rest of the tent was unscathed.
Beck also figured out that her foam sleeping pad (Nemo Switchback) was missing, which was the biggest immediate loss because it helps with sleeping and warmth; we have air pads, too, but put the foam pads on top to add warmth and reduce the pressure points. Beck started to search around camp while I minded dinner; she couldn't find it.
We settled in for the night and thankfully didn't get any more visits. Our 6AM wake-up got us on the trail by 7AM, but just as we were leaving, Beck found her ball cap which she hadn't realized was missing, and that led her to find her pad....which had a hole and some claw marks in it. This was less than 30ft from our tent!
We had about 13 miles to get to Bridge Creek trailhead on State Route 20. Again the trail was pretty mellow gradually climbing another 1,900ft with near-constant ups and downs. Most of the trail was in and out of trees, and it never got very warm, thankfully. Camp was 37F at dawn, and we were in the mid-50F’s by the time we reached the car parked at Bridge Creek TH.
