Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [4]
“It’s bullshit,” Muldaur said when they gathered in Stephens’s driveway to discuss it. “We’ve waited too long. And now comes Labor Day weekend and the weather’s going to be perfect and we can’t go? We’re not going to have a campfire, none of us smokes, and bicycles don’t throw off sparks. The ban is to keep the morons out, and we’re not morons.”
“I agree,” said Giancarlo.
“I also vote that we’re not morons,” said Zak, facetiously.
Stephens added, “You’re absolutely right. That is…Well, after all, bicycles don’t set off sparks. Everybody knows…I mean rules like this are, uh, to keep out the vast majority of the public, because they know if they let everybody up there on a dry weekend like this…I’m sure you’ll all agree, uh, there’ll be a certain percentage of the population who don’t obey anybody’s rules, and of course, as we’ve all discussed before, at least Morse and I have, all it takes is one.”
Zak was beginning to remember Stephens from a ride they’d been on together the previous year. In his late forties, he was two years younger than Muldaur, and he had a way of stammering out his thoughts as if English were a second language. In his own clumsy way he was fond of repeating important points others had stated, but at a torturously slower pace than the original speaker. It was almost as if he thought something hadn’t been said until he said it himself. Muldaur once said, “I always wondered where the center of the universe was, and then I met Steve Stephens and realized he was it.” Cruel, but there was a core of truth to the remark.
“It’s a very dry forest,” said Giancarlo Barrett. At 220 pounds, six feet three inches tall, Giancarlo had climbed Mount Rainier half a dozen times and had done STP, the Seattle to Portland bike ride, eleven years in a row. He and Zak had been friends since drill school six years earlier, and Zak was the best man at his wedding. “The weather guys said it was going to be dry and hotter into next week. More danger of fires. This’ll be our best window.”
“I’m going,” Muldaur said.
Giancarlo turned on his impish grin. “I’m going too, then.”
They would be riding north along the face of the mountain, circumnavigating it and other sheer peaks, pedaling up into a series of low, rolling hills that stretched into the northern part of western Washington. It was an area frequented by fishermen looking to be alone, loggers, mushroom gatherers, dope smugglers, and bear hunters.
A sign cautioned travelers that the road stretched twenty-six miles on gravel before ending, though Stephens assured everyone it was possible to ride mountain bikes all the way to the small town of Snohomish on Highway 2. But that wasn’t where they were headed. They would trek five miles into the hills and then turn east into the real foothills. The first climb after they crossed the North Fork of the Snoqualmie River would gain four thousand feet of elevation.
The plan was to scout for a couple of hours on the rolling county roads and then climb halfway up the side of the Cascades to a camping spot at Panther Creek, where Stephens had paid to have a local man stash their gear. Framed by the summer twilight, they would have a splendid view of Seattle and Bellevue and the Olympic Mountains eighty miles away.
They would spend the first two nights on the western side of the Cascades and then thread their way along hiking trails and back roads until they traversed the Cascade Crest Trail and descended into Salmon La Sac, a small tourist town in central Washington.
They were carrying only