Wildfire season on the Pacific Crest Trail increasingly means one thing for northbound hikers: reroutes. One thru-hiker's final push through Washington this season became a masterclass in improvisation after fire closures near Snoqualmie made the official trail impassable, with air quality hitting a smoky AQI of 198 on her departure morning.
Rather than quit, she pieced together a western detour over Le Bohn Gap — and it turned out to be the hardest day of her entire five-month trek. The route involved relentless bushwhacking, a seemingly endless boulder field, and a scramble of roughly three miles that gained over 2,000 feet, all in fog so thick she could see only a few feet ahead, navigating by cairns at under a mile an hour. The descent was worse: a near-vertical goat path with steps wider than she is tall, a slip wedged between boulders that left her fearing a broken tibia, and a spilled pot of boiling water on her bare foot while cooking in the dark. Oh, and the hot springs at the bottom of that 3,000-foot descent? Walk-ins refused on Tuesdays. It was Tuesday.
After reaching the road at Skykomish, she detoured again through the Mount Baker Wilderness to Monument 47 — a border marker with no established trail, reached by scrambling over deadfall and brush. The reward: a soak at Baker Hot Springs (sulfur stench included for four days) and a stunning campsite on the High Divide Trail with views of Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan. In a twist of perfect trail irony, the PCT reopened the very day she touched the alternate monument — so she hiked to the official terminus at Monument 78 too, via Rainy Pass and Cutthroat Pass, counting 95 slippery blowdowns in the final three miles.
Her trip also offers a useful snapshot of late-season Washington trail conditions. Unlike the graded, stock-friendly PCT, her alternates featured steep grades and scarce campsites, forcing longer days. An early-season snow threat is why she 'flip-flopped' — hiking Washington first before heading south to finish Oregon. And the trail community showed up as always: a stranger at Snow Lake pressing snacks on her, trail angels offering rides, and a crowd of hikers celebrating the reopening together at the terminus.
For anyone eyeing the PCT or Washington's alpine trails, the takeaway is practical: check fire closures and AQI forecasts (the smoke predictions proved accurate), talk to rangers before committing to a reroute, carry real navigation tools, and expect the unofficial stuff — overgrown tread, deadfall, sketchy descents — to be far harder than the trail itself. Also: check the hours before planning your hot spring reward.
It's a vivid reminder that finishing a long trail isn't always a straight line — sometimes it's two border monuments, a bruised shin, and a lot of fog.
