By Susan Ernsdorff
My friend Dee and I had a plan to hike on July 24. The air was not good in the valley, so we decided on Maple Pass, starting somewhat early to hopefully beat the crowds. We were at the trailhead by about 8:15 a.m. — the parking lot was already full, so we joined the dozen cars parked along the highway, and started hiking the 7-mile loop in the clockwise direction. This takes you first up a steep ridge with a view down to Rainy Lake, over a crest to Maple Pass itself, and then down the mostly gentle few miles back to the trailhead, with lovely views of emerald green Lake Ann.
We immediately started meeting people coming the other way who had gotten on the trail truly early. We exchanged the usual pleasantries: “Good morning,” “Lovely day,” “So beautiful,” “Enjoy the rest of your hike!”
That kind of shallow discourse rapidly drives me crazy when there are a lot of people. We wondered, where are all these people coming from? Probably Seattle, we surmised. The next party we met, I asked “We’re wondering, where are you from?”
“Florida,” was the surprising reply. The couple was visiting Washington state to tour all of our national parks. They had “done” Olympic and Rainier and were now on their last one, North Cascades. They expressed great wonder at the variety of our state — and appreciated our low humidity! With an actual heart-felt “Enjoy the rest of your hike,” we continued up the ridge.
We similarly questioned the next couple — they were from Texas and also visiting all three of Washington’s national parks with the same itinerary as the first couple: The Hoh rain forest and an ocean beach in Olympic National Park, Skyline loop trail on Mount Rainier, and finally, Maple Pass.
Dee and I were now fully curious about the home base for the rest of the hikers on the trail. We embraced a new mission — not just to hike the Maple Pass Loop, but to ask everyone we met where they were from. What fun!
The normally three-hour hike took us almost six. We talked to close to 200 people. We chatted with singles, couples, families with kids, groups of friends. We asked and answered questions, hearing stories of home and travel, offering hike ideas for the next day and places to get a beer, and sharing anecdotes about the valley. (The vast majority were on the three-park tour.) We kept mental track of the responses — a list of states and countries that just kept growing. We would rejoice when we got a location we hadn’t already heard, or inform them “Sorry, we already got New York (or Michigan, or Germany…).” Almost everyone we met seemed happy to stop and chat.
Amazing diversity
The diversity was astounding. We met five young men from Nepal, a Ukrainian family with three children, and two old-ish men from Germany and Switzerland who had shipped their van to the eastern shore of Canada, spent a month traversing that country, and now would spend a month traversing back across the U.S. and ship their van home.
A couple from Texas with two young-teen kids were working on their goal of visiting all of the U. S. national parks before the kids graduated high school. An Appalachian Mountain Club group consisted of about eight cheery grey-haired women with a younger male guide, and hailed from states up and down the east coast. We were surprised to encounter single women from Singapore, Dominican Republic, Viet Nam, Columbia, and Paraguay, most traveling with U.S.-based relatives.
A dad and his son from Tennessee charmed us with their drawl. We only crossed paths with two hikers from Canada, and they were from Quebec. We noted that people from big cities would identify those locations as their home, otherwise they would cite the state or country. There were many young people — one couple newly engaged, another on their honeymoon, groups of friends. Some people had flown into Seattle and rented cars, others were on long summer road trips.
States that were not represented included unsurprising ones — Missouri, Alabama, Hawaii — but also ones we did expect such as Idaho and Montana. We estimate that about 10% of the hikers were from Washington, with only two groups from Seattle, where we originally thought everyone would be from!
Our final tally was 38 states plus D.C. and 18 countries (none in Africa), and a grand adventure.
Susan Ernsdorff lives in Twisp.
