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Pacific NW Cover Story Russ Hanbey

The Wanderers' Wayside

Haven for backcountry hikers no more, Kennedy Hot Springs still beckons

An argument flares. A gun is brandished. Shots are fired. A man falls to the ground in the rough-and-tumble town of Darrington, Washington. The owner of the gun, a trapper named Kennedy, gets squirrelly and bolts into the mountains. Which way to go?

Head east up the Sauk River and then its tributary, the White Chuck. Keep going along a rough path until the terrain becomes too vertical, and there it is. A little burble of a hot spring deep in the Cascade Mountains. Lay low until the smoke clears and maybe memories downstream will be short and merciful.

Such was justice in 1920.

No one but the hardiest can escape upriver in that direction these days. A major rainstorm and flood in the fall of 2003 flattened the landscape and eradicated any indication of the humans who had lingered there. Gone is the hand-hewn cabin. Gone are the trails and campsites. There is no sign of the springs, the bridges, corral or shelters. What used to be one of the most popular backcountry areas in the region — Kennedy Hot Springs, named for that errant trapper — has been inundated with mud, woody debris and a ragged mess of rock and exposed gravel.

The area lies 3,200 feet below the west face of Glacier Peak in the North Central Cascades. The White Chuck River cuts a path through the terrain and is joined by Kennedy Creek in what is now a jumbled flood plain. U.S. Forest Service logs note that in the early days, the hot springs trickled out as nothing more than an overheated mud hole. Over the years, it was fashioned into a 5-foot-deep enclosure capable of soaking half a dozen or so people at a time.

In their book, "Routes and Rocks," D.F. Crowder and Rowland Tabor say the exact origin of the hot springs is unknown, but likely is a remnant of the "furnace" that fired up Glacier Peak. Deer, band-tailed pigeons and mountain goats also used the mineral-rich area as a source of salt and other nutrients.

The Sauk Indians probably found their way into the area early on, even though petroglyphs etched on now-buried rocks were never substantiated as legitimate. Possibly the Sauk leader Yowhbid traveled though Kennedy on his way to White Pass to the south. Stories told by Sauk tribal members speak of Yowhbid's prowess as a grizzly bear hunter in the 1800s using only a bow and arrow. His favorite hunting areas were the meadow systems near the headwaters of the White Chuck River.

What is known for sure is that Harry Grey blazed a route into the area in 1915 while leading a crew of 60 men to fight a wild fire on Fire Mountain. That only eight of the 60 men made it to the fire is testimonial to the ruggedness of the area. Later, Harry continued to trap along the White Chuck River all the way to the hot springs and established the first trail into the area. He then built a cabin in 1925 with the help of a Forest Service trail crew.

The next year, the cabin was made an official Forest Service guard station and sheltered a long succession of fire guards, wilderness rangers, trail crews, researchers, search-and-rescue teams and the occasional illegal squatter. For seven decades, back-country wanderers of every ilk found their way into Kennedy.

Edith Bedal, a Sauk Indian, packed in a group of mountaineers and climbed with them to the summit of Glacier Peak in 1929. Her name was one of the first signatures on the newly minted cabin, showing a date of Sept. 16, 1927. This is what Edith and her sister Jean said about their first trip into the area: "I am going back again because, for me, there is a strange and mystic charm about the place. It must be the clean beauty of the little cabin. It must be the lure of the swamp and rushing blue and milky water. It must be the mystery of the hot springs and the trail leading to Lake Byrne, beckoning up to a higher forest mecca."

Hugh Miller came to Darrington in 1913 and eventually went to work for the Forest Service. He managed the monumental construction of a 60-mile loop trail up the North Fork of the Sauk River to White Pass then back down the White Chuck, past Kennedy and back to the Sauk. Along the way, he and his crew put up a shelter every eight miles.

Many years later, a lovely woman showed up claiming she was Mrs. Hugh Miller, come to reunite with her missing husband. He had fled to the wilderness without her knowledge to manage his drinking problem. Later on, he wintered over at Kennedy Hot Springs, where he lived at the cabin and trapped martens, all to make his wife a fur cape.

OVER THE YEARS, thousands of other soul-searchers, hikers and horsemen have found their way to or through Kennedy Hot Springs. The long drive up the White Chuck River led to a trailhead that opened the door to a deep-forest hiking experience second to none. This five-mile walk was, for many, their first overnight trip or day hike in true wilderness. The annual number of trekkers remained modest for a long time, with a reported 14 visitors in 1955. Kennedy backcountry guard Davey "Buckshot" Tucker spent part of his childhood living with his mother and brothers on Mount Three Fingers, where she was a fire lookout. In the 1950s, he and his wife, Kitty, honeymooned at Kennedy.

By 1960, 200 or more adventurers were coming, and in the 1970s the totals peaked at more than 3,000 people per season. Large groups like the Seattle Mountaineers, Mazamas and the Sierra Club were among them. Outward Bound and the National Outdoor Leadership Conference made it their first stop at the beginning of extended wilderness trips in the area. Many a wide-eyed 16-year-old from Kansas ended up peering into the darkness for bear eyes while applying Band-Aids to newly blistered feet. Probably most of the Boy Scouts in the region made it into Kennedy at one time or another.

For others, Kennedy was a pass-through to the climbing routes and remote trails of the Glacier Peak Wilderness. Access to the Pacific Crest Trail, which bisects the west flanks of Glacier Peak, was up the White Chuck past Kennedy. The June 1971 issue of National Geographic prominently featured the region in a piece called "Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail."

The one-room log guard station was home base for hundreds of backcountry workers over time. The 18-by-22-foot Pacific silver fir cabin featured a large red cedar door and simple cedar furniture including a bed, table and chair. Paned-glass windows on three sides let in filtered light that highlighted a mishmash of stored tools, emergency gear, hiking equipment and the quirky artifacts of an era of use. Outside was a storage shed, rustic fresh-water spring and a one-seater outhouse down the way.

Nels Skaar and Clint Tollenaar, Scandinavian pioneers in the Darrington area, made the main kitchen cabinet, which stood in a dark corner above the sink. Thousands of hands had touched the door over the years, most of them rough, working hands looking for a bowl or a cup. Each hand left a print, the prints laid one upon the next until a sheen of sweat, soot and soil polished the doors and preserved the branded-in names of the builders.

Rangers assigned to the cabin would sit at the shaky table by the window peering out over the White Chuck River. Once the sun dropped, the cabin would darken and the only light would come from candles or an old lantern. It was often in the altered evening light that the rangers would eventually notice the penciled signatures along the bottom side of one of the wall logs. Here was where each succeeding ranger would lay claim to a piece of Kennedy history. Only those who stayed a long time signed and dated the log, extending the human history of the place.

A pot-bellied stove held center stage and served to heat the dank cabin on cold and wet days. No one stayed there who didn't come away with memories of being lulled to sleep by the nearby river, or being awakened by the army of mice that owned the cabin much of the year. A family of martens wintered over in the attic of the unoccupied cabin and worked hard at mouse control. In the summer of 1974, the ranger killed 275 mice in the line of duty and passed them on to the martens camped out under a nearby log.

In July of 1975, a major rain and flood led to a burst-out flood off the Scimitar Glacier four miles upstream. The ensuing onslaught blew through Kennedy for 12 hours and stranded 22 hikers who thought they were spending a quiet night near a pleasant backcountry camp. A ranger arrived the next day not knowing the plight of the hikers, but found them safe and joined them until the flooding subsided. Rangers dropped a tree across Kennedy Creek so search-and-rescue people could walk the hikers out along the washed-out White Chuck Trail to safety. It was a harbinger of things to come in 2003.

AS THE SUMMER hiking season begins, miles of forest trail in the region remain inaccessible from the heavy damage of the 2003 onslaught and a new spate of violent storms this past November. The new storms added $2.8 million to the original estimate of $10 million in damage to roads, bridges and trails. In 2003, more than 15 popular trails were destroyed, along with 20 bridges and 30 miles of the Pacific Crest scenic trail. The recent toll included the loss of nearly all bridges in the Glacier Peak Wilderness.

Because it takes three to five years for funding to catch up to the repairs needed, it's not likely the average hiker will be able to easily visit the west slopes of the Cascades anytime soon.

To get to Kennedy now, the intrepid have to start walking nine miles down the road just to get to the old trailhead at Owl Creek, skirting around blowouts and slides along the way. Then you're left to scramble over rugged terrain along the previous trail corridor. It likely replicates much of what Harry Grey found nearly a century ago when he worked his way up the valley. Another option is to hike the sketchy Lost Creek Ridge Trail for 11 miles to Lake Byrne, then drop down the 90 switchbacks to the Kennedy Basin. Unfortunately, there is no verified way across the White Chuck River, so the territory from that angle remains virtually inaccessible.

So, what to do?

Some would leave well enough alone and not rebuild access to the area, thereby honoring the intent of the Wilderness Act of 1964. Significant language in the law defines "wilderness" as lands that generally appear "to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature" and offer "outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation."

From that perspective, the floods of 2003 and 2006 along the western slopes of the Cascades maintain the intended integrity of the Wilderness Act in its strictest sense, letting nature take its course. But what of the realities of human nature, and our urge to explore and develop? What obligation does the Forest Service have to put things back the way they were, especially with such tightly restricted funding?

As of now, a new trail has been surveyed into the Kennedy area, but construction timelines remain unclear. The new trail would be carved high above the mercurial White Chuck River in hopes of avoiding the unstable nature of the river bottom. Should nothing be done, the area could be left open for a new generation of cross-country hikers to explore. Others might retrace their steps in the valley to recall the way it was.

Old man Kennedy had his own worries 77 years earlier. His conscience ate at him until he decided to march out to Darrington and give himself up. The man he'd shot had recovered and was long gone by the time he showed up. The locals had pretty much forgotten about the incident. Kennedy, in his turn, added his story to the inventory of those who have found their way into this quiet place at the head of the valley.

Russ Hanbey is a former wilderness ranger and frequent volunteer for the U.S. Forest Service. He works as the senior project coordinator at Roosevelt High School in Seattle.

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