Hidden wonder of Stehekin could be unveiled again

CHELAN, Wash. — I’d be lying if I said I always agreed with Doc Hastings. But for the moment, the Republican U.S. congressman from Pasco is my hero. He’s the guy who has stepped up to the plate for a cause I believe in.

The cause itself may seem minuscule in the big picture when compared with our understandable focus on the rallying but rickety economy, U.S. military personnel in peril on foreign soil, gangland shootings on our streets and, of course, our collective handwringing over Paula Abdul leaving American Idol.

But to the people of Stehekin or anybody who has ever visited that remote outpost on the northwestern tip of Lake Chelan — reachable only by boat, float plane or a multi-day backpack — Doc’s current effort on their behalf is like a lifeline tossed to a drowning man.

For a century, Stehekin has been a jumping-off point for treks into the North Cascades. The little community — which was there not only before the creation of the North Cascades National Park (which has all but consumed it) but also before the birth of the National Park Service itself — has long depended on the tourism dollars of those backcountry-bound visitors.

The pioneers who punched in the old Stehekin Valley Road that follows the valley, overlooking the Stehekin River, knew what they were doing: They built the road safely above the floodplain, only to see the feds come along in their infinite wisdom and screw it up. In the 1930s, a critical 21/2-mile stretch of what the locals still call “the old wagon road” or “the detour road” was made part of the then-new Pacific Crest Trail, and Civilian Conservation Corps crews replaced that span by building an alternative route down below, along the river.

It was only a matter of time before the river washed out that section of road, and in 2003 it happened. The Park Service promptly abandoned the road above that washout — making many of the natural wonders far upriver, like the spectacularly beautiful Horseshoe Basin  — virtually inaccessible to all but the sturdiest of backpackers.

Now that hike would entail an additional 22-mile round trip on an old dirt road to the old Cottonwood camp, from which they would then have a reasonable (albeit still strenuous) day hike up to the Horseshoe’s splendid views.

It would be a simple enough process to rectify the problem, of course. It would simply entail rerouting the road to Cottonwood back onto the old, original route, then moving the Crest Trail down along the river. Hikers like to enjoy views of wild rivers anyway, and it’s a far easier thing to reroute a trail around the occasional flood than it is to rebuild a road.

Why not just apply that simple solution?

Well, for one thing, the Park Service doesn’t want to; it would cost money. (Not too much, though — only about $1.3 million, according to the service’s own 2006 analysis, and construction bids in today’s economic climate might even come in under that.) And the Service can point to the 1988 Washington Parks Wilderness Act — which created the North Cascades National Park and Stephen Mather Wilderness on both sides of the river, excluding its 100-foot-wide corridor — and say, “Sorry, we couldn’t move it anyway. The wording in that law won’t allow it.”

Well, then, change the law.

But since 2006, the people of Stehekin and a few allies, like state Sen. Linda Evans Parlette of Wenatchee, have been like Don Quixote flailing at windmills, trying in vain to find someone to champion their cause at the federal level.

Until Doc Hastings accepted that challenge.

He has introduced a bill, H.B. 2806, that would allow the road and that 100-foot-wide non-Wilderness corridor to be moved, with no net loss or gain of Wilderness, to the place it should have been all along. It would change that 1988 Washington Parks Wilderness Act, but even the act’s author, former senator and governor Dan Evans, has written in support of doing just that; Evans says it was never his intent for the wording of the original law to prevent such a common-sense solution.

The National Park Service opposes Doc’s bill — which comes off to me as a little two-faced, since the Service has been going to great lengths to see that flooding in the Olympic National Park doesn’t negate road access there. The record of decision on the Olympic National Park’s management plan (signed by the Service’s regional and nominated-for-national director, Jon Jarvis) specifically said Wilderness boundaries “may be adjusted along roads to allow continued road access into the park.”

So let’s get this straight: Doing that on the Olympic Peninsula is OK, but doing so in the North Cascades is wrong?

Doc Hastings called that an “obvious double standard” in his July 30 subcommittee testimony on his bill. I completely agree, and when Doc’s bill goes before the House Committee on Natural Resources on Sept. 10, I hope the other Washington members on the committee (Democrat Jay Inslee and Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers) stand up for this bill in a big way. And because this bill will also have to make it through the Senate to become law, Sen. Patty Murray and Sen. Maria Cantwell need to get on board as well.

And they should. It’s common sense. And not only that, this bill would rectify an old wrong. And righting wrongs is what the law is supposed to be all about.

• Outdoors editor Scott Sandsberry can be reached at 509-577-7689 or ssandsberry@yakimaherald.com.

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