Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [11]
Stephens led them down to the rugged North Fork of the Snoqualmie, which now in late August was just a shadow of its normal self, and then along some overgrown logging roads Weyerhaeuser workmen had once used to haul logs out of the area. Somewhere on the county road to the west they could hear the caravan of vehicles racing back down the road. “Who the hell let them past the gate?” Muldaur asked.
“I wonder if they even knew we were there,” said Zak.
“The first car did.” Muldaur turned to him. “I saw the passenger laughing.”
“They were laughing at us?”
“One of them was.”
Eventually they made their way down a slight incline to where the road crossed the Snoqualmie River on a concrete bridge. Because they’d detoured into the woods, they’d bypassed a good part of the county road, as well as what Stephens called the Spur Ten gate, which he assured them would be locked and would effectively bar the Jeeps from following them.
Once they attained the bridge, they stopped to take in the panorama. Zak could see a quarter mile to the north and a bit more to the south. The water was slow and swirling with eddies and currents and moss-covered rocks exposed by the summer waterline. He could have watched the river all afternoon. The bridge had no railings, and Zak couldn’t help thinking how easy it would be for a car to drive off it. They stared at the hypnotic currents, at the silvers, greens, and lazy blue colors farther downstream. A kingfisher sat on a branch thirty yards away, and Zak spotted a deer standing in the water downriver. The air was cooler here and refreshing.
“Is there snowmelt at this time of year?” Zak asked.
“Oh, no, well, you know…that all ended months ago,” said Stephens. “Most of this water’s coming from up in the high lakes. When there’s snowmelt, it’s all sea green and milky from…well, not clear like this.”
Zak looked up at the close mountains above them in wonderment that they would conquer these slopes in ways that hadn’t been possible when their pioneer ancestors traversed them. Stephens pointed deep into the woods where there were occasional cedar stumps eight or twelve feet across, remnants of the titans that had been logged eighty years back and that dwarfed anything they would see in the tree farms.
“Can you imagine how dark this forest was at one time?” Giancarlo said. “We’ll never see that kind of majesty again. Not unless nature finds a way to eliminate us. Oh, my God, this is beautiful. This view is worth the trip.”
“I’ve been here many times,” said Morse, “but it never fails to amaze me.”
Stephens had located their first night’s camp on a rare flat spot hidden from the road, near an anorexic-looking waterfall that formed a small pool before disappearing over the side of the mountain. It was the terminus of Panther Creek, because from here it ran directly into the North Fork below. They’d been pedaling up the mountain on steep switchbacks, traversing the Z-scar patterns they’d spotted from the valley floor. The roads were impossibly sheer in some places—so sheer that even with twenty-seven speeds, Giancarlo was wishing for lower gears. “Couldn’t ride a lower gear,” said Muldaur. “You wouldn’t be going fast enough to stay upright. You’d fall over.”
Morse, who was gasping, said, “Maybe we should have brought ice axes.”
“Or parachutes.”
The camping spot at Panther Creek was one of the few places they’d seen where they could pedal off the road—everything else had been hemmed in by sheer rock faces, stands of trees, or drop-offs. Most of the area was closed in by maturing Douglas fir planted after this section of the mountain had been logged off twenty or thirty years before. The clearing was in a small cul-de-sac that had once acted as a dumping area for logging operations, old roots and