Blue Chelan: Waterway to American Alps

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Overview

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It's a place for boaters and fishermen, for high school kids chasing each other, for family summer cabins, for the whole excited/bored vacation resort thing. But that's downlake--uplake that all falls away as the blue waters (certified as the purist in America) round wooded curves into the heart of North Cascades National Park--a Switzerland of 8000 foot peaks and an abiding, bracing calm.Quick Tips: Best Way To Get Around: What makes the time-travel from wacky jetski resort to stately wilderness possible is the Lady of the Lake, whose regular runs make it possible for people to live uplake, where there are no roads, no mail, no phone, no television. Or, fly Chelan Airways up ther...Read More

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Holden Village Bed and Breakfast

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Hotel | "Holden Village B&B"

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Holden is an old mining town situated in a beautiful valley leading up into the deep Cascades from the Chelan valley. It's a unique place full of mountain wildlife and wildflowers. Holden Village is a Lutheran Retreat center, but that doesn't dominate the area. Lots of people get off the Lady of the Lake and just start hiking off the dozens of trails that lead up out of the village. You can stay at the rustic lodges without having to be into the religion. $48 a night or $226 a week. Which, let me add, includes access to snack bar, bowling alley, pool hall, sauna, and jacuzzi. You can write them at: Registrar, Holden Village, Chealan WA 98816 or leave a message at (509)687-3644. This is another...Read More

Member Rating 3 out of 5 on October 10, 2000

Holden Village Bed and Breakfast
21081 South Lake Shore Toad
Lake Chelan, Washington 98816
(509) 687-9695

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Snowshoeing

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Attraction

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The effortless access the Lady of the Lake gives to deep mountains and three meter snow makes snowshoeing an attractive option--a way of hiking in wintertime. Obviously you can get some snowshoes and head out anywhere, but here I'm dealing with it as a semi-organized activity out of Stehekin Lodge at the top of Lake Chelan. Snowshoeing is not as well-known or popular as skiing (possibly because you end up slogging along instead of zipping around looking cool) but is a nice, low impact, accessible activity. You don't need skills, or expensive equipment, or groovy clothes, or expensive lift tickets, or environment-transforming facilities. And you don't burn gas, scare animals, and pollute th...Read More

The effortless access the Lady of the Lake gives to deep mountains and three meter snow makes snowshoeing an attractive option--a way of hiking in wintertime. Obviously you can get some snowshoes and head out anywhere, but here I'm dealing with it as a semi-organized activity out of Stehekin Lodge at the top of Lake Chelan.
Snowshoeing is not as well-known or popular as skiing (possibly because you end up slogging along instead of zipping around looking cool) but is a nice, low impact, accessible activity. You don't need skills, or expensive equipment, or groovy clothes, or expensive lift tickets, or environment-transforming facilities. And you don't burn gas, scare animals, and pollute the air. You just strap on these weird little tennis rackets and head out for a quiet walk through the woods--on top of 12 feet of snow. You aren't limited to trails or slopes, you can cruise in among the trees and venture out on iced-over ponds. It's aerobic and can be done at any age.
In a remote wilderness like the Stehekin Valley it's an almost mystical experience. You walk (well, waddle) along in a silent white world, a single point of movement and color in a frieze of silver-white. You move lightly on top of the skittering, diamond crust, like a wolf. You leap cornices into a feathery, shivery soft landing. You fall right on your fool ass. But no problem, you make snow angels. Unlike snow skiing, which can make you into a REAL angel. Just ask Sonny Bono.
Anyway, it's a differnent kind of way to enjoy winter, one that doesn't make you embarassed to be out there spoiling everything. And when you get back to the Lodge you're going to be colder than the proverbial witch's implant. And there will be a warm room with a fire and some brandy and chowder.

The Stehekin Lodge has special winter packages for snowshoeing: go up on the Lady of the Lake, stay in the Lodge, frolic and play in the Eskimo way--around $250 per couple.

Contact Stehekin Lodge at 509-682-4494 or info@stehekin.com

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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on October 9, 2000

Snowshoeing
Throughout Lake Chelan
Lake Chelan, Washington

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Chelan Seaplanes

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Wings over Stehekin Photo - Lake Chelan, Washington

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The Lady of the Lake boats (why do they call them that on every damn lake in the country?) provide wonderful access to the Uplake wilderness, but there's a cooler way to go if you can afford it--seaplane. And not only to Stehekin and Holden, either. You can get them to drop you off at Domke Lake or other remote tarns where you will be flat ALONE and ISOLATED. Especially impressive in winter. Fortunately you can also arrange for them to pick you up and take you out. These guys have been doing this forever and have a perfect safety record (or so they claim). You get on down in the bustling resort atmosphere of Chelan, then lift over all that, and the acres of apple orchards, and immediately start ...Read More

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Boat-Only Campgrounds Uplake--FREE!

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Campground View Photo - Lake Chelan, Washington

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The downlake end of the Chelan Valley is crammed with motels, hotels, resorts, condos, rental houses, bed & breakfasts, while uplake there are only a few resort lodges. But the real fun, for my money, is in between--canoeing up and camping at the string of campsites that are only accessible by boat. They are nicely spaced to allow a trip up lake and back, and provide a great place to stay for awhile and explore the mountains above. Do a little fishing and hanging out in a place with no cars and where nobody is going to suddenly walk up on you. These are thought of as fairly primitive sights by the Park Service and Forest Service, but I call them pretty luxurious--they even have toilets...Read More

The downlake end of the Chelan Valley is crammed with motels, hotels, resorts, condos, rental houses, bed & breakfasts, while uplake there are only a few resort lodges. But the real fun, for my money, is in between--canoeing up and camping at the string of campsites that are only accessible by boat. They are nicely spaced to allow a trip up lake and back, and provide a great place to stay for awhile and explore the mountains above. Do a little fishing and hanging out in a place with no cars and where nobody is going to suddenly walk up on you.
These are thought of as fairly primitive sights by the Park Service and Forest Service, but I call them pretty luxurious--they even have toilets. The shelters are great. Only trouble is, you don't get as many canoes and kayaks here as you get skiboats full of dickheads or houseboats full of Flintstones and Kids. But after labor day it gets nicer. A nice time at the lake in general--after school starts, but still nice enough to swim down by Manson, a bite in the night and color in the leaves.
Big Creek has 1 permanent shelter and 4 tent sites, a double outhouse, 4 picnic tables and fire rings, and a dock for about 4 boats (or a bunch of canoes). I've never stayed at Corral Creek, but it's about the same size. Deer Point has 5 tent sites and good shelter from downlake winds, but NONE from uplake winds. This is significant in the 'Narrows' of the lake, where winds get funneled in by the steep, high surrounding cliffs and can blow your bootie away. I watched my girlfriend get dragged 40 feet before she gave up and let go of our 8x10 tent one time. (once she let go, it settled down) And I once saw a guy open his front door and have the wind just blow the seams out of the back of his two man tent. You gotta be ready for wind...if it isn't blowing now, it will. I had to spend three days at Big Creek once because high winds made it impossible to take off in my overloaded canoe. (Fortunately part of the load was one of the nastiest girlfriends I've ever had the pleasure of, so we whiled the time away. She even managed to shoot some fish with my bow, stalking naked along the shore with a 50 pound compound loaded for bear.)
Domke Falls, where the outflow from Domke Lake makes it down to Lake Chelan is a very nice spot with 4 tent sites, a floating dock (which makes it better in winter than a fixed dock) and some pretty good fishing right there at the campsite. Graham Harbor has a huge floating doc and 5 tent sites, with a permanent shelter. The Lucerne site, right by the Forest Service Station, has a big dock and lots of tables, but isn't really much of a camp spot--same goes for Mitchell Creek. Refrigerator Point is a good one, with 4 tent sites, 4 tables and 2 toilets, Safety Harbor is almost identical--and probably the best wind-sheltered of all the campgrounds. I spent four days here in February once, huddled around a fire in 20 below weather when a ling cod line-fishing trip got snafued--we didn't react soon enough to the Lady of the Lake passing and her wake swamped out canoe and soaked all our stuff (except the clothes on our back, which we soaked ourselves trying to rescue the rest of the stuff). I'm sure Patrick McManus could have made it funny, but were able to contain our laughter while trying to make a fire quick enough to keep from freezing to death. I was afraid my fishing partner was going to kill me so she could warm her hands in my carcass. I wouldn't have put it past her. Anyway, we survived. Read Less

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Lady of the Lake--Uplake by Boat

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Lady of the Lake II Photo - Lake Chelan, Washington

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Before mentioning the Lady Boats that make the runs, let me say a little bit about the lake itself. 'Blue Chelan' is accepted as the most pristine open water in the country. Though part of the 'clear blue' water reputation, it turns out, was because copper tailings from mines at Holden killed micro-organisms of the kind that cause green water in other lakes. The Chelan Valley is the deepest gorge in North America, surrounded by 9000 foot mountains, with the glacier-carved lake itself over 1400 feet deep (third deepest in the U.S.), the bottom 400 feet actually below sea level. 27 glaciers and 57 creeks feed the lake, whose shoreline is maintained by the damn down at Chelan. The lake provide...Read More

Before mentioning the Lady Boats that make the runs, let me say a little bit about the lake itself. 'Blue Chelan' is accepted as the most pristine open water in the country. Though part of the 'clear blue' water reputation, it turns out, was because copper tailings from mines at Holden killed micro-organisms of the kind that cause green water in other lakes. The Chelan Valley is the deepest gorge in North America, surrounded by 9000 foot mountains, with the glacier-carved lake itself over 1400 feet deep (third deepest in the U.S.), the bottom 400 feet actually below sea level. 27 glaciers and 57 creeks feed the lake, whose shoreline is maintained by the damn down at Chelan.
The lake provides a unique passageway into deep wilderness--it would take weeks to hike into Stehekin if the lake were not there. Stehekin, by the way, is the only town in mainland Washington that has no road leading in to it--you get here by boat. Lucerne and Holden village are the same. The Lady of the Lake stops off and delivers mail, the stores take orders from residents and have the orders sent up on the boat. Point of purchase offers and impulse buying are minimal here. The uplake end, at Stehekin, is remote and almost eerily clean. You get off the boat and notice an odd smell, which you finally identify as fresh air, unpolluted, unsmogged, unsmoked. It can cause euphoria.
The headwaters are in the North Cascades National Park, a new, wild, rugged chunk of upthrust. It's the largest and most rugged alpine wilderness in the United States (outside of Alaska, which is just generally large and rugged, even the women). It is an above-the-treeline sort of place scored by over 400 glaciers and punctuated by dozens of 9000 foot peaks. Virgin douglas fir and red cedar forests harbor wildlife including gray wolves and grizzly bears. An idea of the terrain can be read right off a map--Desolation Peak, Mount Fury, Jagged Ridge, Mount Terror. And when you step off the boat in Stehekin, you are right there in it--just start walking uphill.
There are only about 70 residents of Stehekin, and you can be one of them for a night or two in the North Cascades Stehekin Lodge. They have 28 units of tranquility (no phone, no TV, no cars, no news) some with kitchens, ranging from $90-129 a night. There are also some fun seasonal packages, like an autumn leaf weekend; snowshoe, bike, XC ski, and rafting junkets; and unusual stuff like their Moonlight Snowshoe outing, with bonfire and frivolity. These run about $199-299 for two.
Contact the Lodge at 509-682-4494 or info@stehekin.com

Now, about those Lady Boats. The Boat Company has been running people uplake for over 100 years, but they keep up with the times. The Lady of the Lake is a big 350 passenger job with viewing decks, which makes a liesurely trip up the lake, stopping in Manson and Lucerne and Holden and Stehekin. It's a whole day thing, as it should be. $23 round trip.
The newer-fangled Lady Express does it in half the time. You can kill time FASTER! $42 TR in May-October, $23 November-April.
For those who can only handle calm and leisure at ultra turbo high speed, there is now the Lady Cat, a high-powered speedboat that looks like a liveboat on the Starship Enterprize and does the trip in an hour for like $90. Free 'Type A Yuppie Scum' T-shirt thrown in.

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