Having slept with no fly sheet that night, we opened our eyes to a beautiful clear blue sky. Clouds did roll in as we packed up camp, but it just added to the scene as we began the morning’s descent. It was a steep decline down to a lake’s edge, the alpine blue of these waters still amazing us everyday. Rain began to fall as we meandered through a sparse woodland and into a lake filled meadow.

In Washington, rain brings humidity and the combination, along with the extra coat layer, makes for a sweaty situation. A steep climb out of the meadow valley took us to the next mountainous bowl whose slopes featured out of season ski lifts. Past scree and rock fall we went until we summited along side one of these ski lifts  and began the descent down towards Stevens Pass. Stevens Pass is a ski resort come trail bike centre in the off season.

On the slopes around us, streams of bikes carved their way down routes to the assortment of buildings that made up the second to last stop of our journey. While the others headed off to Skykomish to pick up their resupply packages, Molly and I grabbed ours from the resort and set up base in the Foggy Goggle restaurant. A spot of food, an enormous ice creams or two and a fair few hours later, our time was up and we all agreed to head back to trail.

Inevitably we got distracted straight away by trail magic at the trail head by the one and only Madd Baker who had delivered magic back at Chinook Pass. Again, after some grub, we left the comforts behind and continued for another 6 miles to Lake Valhalla. We were pleasantly surprised to see plenty of camp spots and to be joined by our trail startee, Crane, who we hadn’t seen since North California.