WILLKOMMEN ZUR HöLLE

(or "My Weekend as a Leavenworth Tourist")

I am not proud - indeed, I am ashamed - to admit that I was, for three entire horrible, horrible days, the lowest of all known life forms: a Leavenworth tourist. I stayed in a hotel. I went shopping. I listened to yodeling. I held hands with my wife as we strolled down Front Street. How could I sink so low?

Here's how. My friend, Doug, being a romantic sort (or did he have some other motive?), invited me and my wife, Karen, to help him plan and execute a renewal of marital vows with is wife, Lori. Doug had picked a most scenic spot for the ceremony, a small granite dome overlooking Icicle Creek. The place was familiar to me as a climber: Muscle Beach. Yes, that seemed like a fine spot. I had not been there for many years, but my recollection was that it was a suitable place, close to the road but with good views down the canyon. Since the Rat Creek fire had scorched the brush, the dome was visible from the road, and it crossed my mind that everyone driving by would be able to see the spectacle, but what the heck? It was romantic, and Doug was a good friend, so I would go along even if it meant being embarrassed a little bit. I figured at worst it would mean driving over on Saturday morning, dropping off the wife and kids in town, doing some bouldering, toproping, or making a run up Castle Rock or Careno Crag, then spending a night at my grandmother's house, doing the renewal of vows thing Sunday morning, climbing a little more, doing a few boulder problems at Swift Water, then heading back over the pass. Yeah, that wouldn't be so bad at all. That, however, was not the official plan.

The official plan, as explained to me by Karen, was that we would spend the night in a hotel in town so as not to impose on my grandmother. In addition, we would go shopping in town, eat at a nice restaurant, and do something fun with the kids. Basically the whole tourist weekend thing. We had tried this once years before, and it hadn't gone well. I had paced around the hotel room like a circus elephant shackled and caged in the middle of the savanna. I had an irresistible urge to break free and roam my old stomping grounds. Karen was not pleased when we "went for a drive" and happened to end up at Eightmile Buttress, and even less amused when I produced rock shoes and a chalk bag from the trunk and disappeared for an hour or so. But this time Doug and I planned to do a little climbing, so it would not be so bad. I could suffer a few hours of tourism if I could still go climbing. Right?

Before I knew it, one night in Leavenworth became two nights because the money-grubbing hotel required a two-night minimum stay on weekends. That would work out fine, though, because it meant we could do the tourist thing on Friday evening, then on Saturday I could bail with Doug and climb almost all day instead of just for a couple of hours. Sure, we would spend a little time preparing for the ceremony, but that would leave quite a bit of time for climbing. So we booked the reservations at Icicle Inn, which turned out to be the hotel on at Icicle Junction, right next to that little amusement park with the train, putt-putt golf, and so on. You know the place? Exactly.

It happened that Karen and I were driving through Leavenworth one afternoon not long before the big event, so I drove us out to Muscle Beach so she could see the lay of the land, to help her plan the decorations. She was in charge of flowers and such, so I thought it would help if she saw the place ahead of time. We parked across the road and hiked down the brushy trail, then scrambled up a slab to the top of the dome. I walked over to peer down and see if anyone was down there toproping or skinny dipping, and recoiled in horror at the sight of a cabin under construction directly across the creek. I had first climbed in the Icicle in the mid-70s, when there had been maybe a dozen cabins, mostly clustered down by Icicle Island, and few of which were visible from the road. The idea of private land in the Icicle was a novel one; hardly anybody knew or cared that there was private land up there. We all just hiked up to the crags at will, climbed and bouldered on everything, bivied wherever we wanted, and nobody really cared. Forest rangers might suggest we not camp here or there, but for the most part they smiled and waved at us as they drove up the canyon to collect fees from the campers or whatever it was they did up there. Then in the early 80s a bunch of for sale signs sprang up, followed closely by no trespassing signs, and then foundations, frames, and ultimately a spate of unsightly cabins, some right beside the road, others right beside our beloved boulders. Then the forest rangers started kicking climbers out of their favorite bivy sites and issuing citations, and people started getting arrested and fined for trespassing. I had naively hoped that the Rat Creek fire, having successfully eliminated several cabins, had cured that bad habit or at least abated it, but clearly new construction was not deterred, as here of all places, right across from one of the best places in the Icicle to hang out and toprope, was a big, ugly cabin. When we got home, I called Doug and told him the bad news. He went out a few weeks later to see for himself, and concurred. He spent an afternoon scouting for a new location, and fortunately found a suitable spot a few miles upstream.

So anyway, one Friday in July, there we were, the whole family (plus Lauren's friend, Katie), driving across Stevens Pass toward the famed Bavarian Village. After narrowly avoiding the requisite head-on collision on Highway 2 (only one fatality!), we sailed down the other side of the pass and through Tumwater Canyon without even stopping at Swift Water, eager to get started with the shopping, eating, drinking, and wandering aimlessly through this platz and that. We pulled into our hotel at three and went straight to the bar. No, actually, we just dumped the luggage in the room, cranked up the air conditioner, and proceeded straight to Front Street to commence with the tourist activities. (Later, I would wish we had hit the bar first and just stayed there.)

Harvey Manning surveying a trail for his upcoming 100 Hikes in Hell guide.

What a nightmare! The tourists were everywhere. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. All shuffling and moseying along the sidewalks like brainless zombies. Old men in shorts. Old women in tights. Leather-clad bikers. Camera-draped Japanese families taking pictures of each other. Obese couples hogging the whole sidewalk. Teenagers wearing goofy hats. Snot-nosed little kids whining at their parents. Pot bellies. Varicose veins. Bald spots. Stupid t-shirts. Oh, the humanity! Thinking I might delay the inevitable mental breakdown and preserve a little sanity, I dropped the gang off at the hat shop and sped over to the forest service office to look at maps and ask about trail conditions and such. But even that was a tourist-plagued circus. Tourists were walking in and out, buying permits and asking stupid tourist questions. A lady brought in a mutant bird she had found that was sick and couldn't fly; she opened the box to show a ranger the tumors growing on the bird's head and wing and it suddenly flew out and landed on another lady and pooped on her head. I hastily bought a few maps and got the hell out of there!

After that, I drove back down to Front Street and spent about ten minutes looking for a parking spot. In the old days (you know you're getting old when you start a sentence like this), there was always a place to park. Now it's like you go away for a weekend in the mountains and end up at the mall, only it's worse because you're in Leavenworth and there's polka music blaring out of every other doorway and some creepy old guy in lederhosen is following you. To retain my sanity, I headed straight for Der Sportsman, where there is at least something related to climbing going on. Sure, maybe one out of every thousand people who come in the store is a climber, and they sell those tacky t-shirts, but they have climbing gear, guidebooks and magazines to look at, so it's a kind of safe harbor from the tourist-infested streets.

Some things just never go out of style.

After loitering long enough at Der Sportsman, I went across the street to look at the artwork, and saw some very good photographs with some very high price tags. Everything was for sale, but nobody seemed to be buying anything. Many tourists came looking, looking, then wandered off. Me, too. Unable to stall any longer, I wandered over the hat shop to meet up with the family, and there they were, already bored. Karen confessed that she had never realized that there were so many shops in Leavenworth selling so much crap. The kids wanted to go swimming. Or did they want to go on the bumper boats? Or was it miniature golf? Whatever. Anything, I thought, must be better than hanging around on Front Street with this pack of tourists. So we piled in the car and drove back to the hotel, and ate dinner at the tacky little J.J. Hill's Restaurant, where a little HO-scale train circled above. Such high class! Trying to get into the fake-bavarian-village tourist paradigm, I thought I'd order something German. According to the menu, the weiner schnitzel which was "prepared in the traditional style." Having no idea what that meant, I asked the waitress. After she explained what weiner schnitzel was and how it was prepared, I ordered the ribs. Big mistake. I got a plate stacked about a foot high with beef ribs. I felt like Fred Flintstone parked outside the Bronto Burger. Luckily, the table did not tip over. I gnawed on the ribs for awhile, then gave up. Two days later, the other hotel guests were still asking me, "did you finish those ribs yet?" No . . . but thanks for asking.

After dinner, we went to the Family Fun Center. Oh, joy! The Family Fun Center is that little amusement park at Icicle Junction. You know, with the train ride and putt-putt golf? Exactly. In addition to the train ride, it has a game room, theater, putt-putt golf course, and bumper boats. It was built so that tourists would have a place to unload their extremely bored kids and a few more of their dollars. Gameworks it ain't. The place wasn't exactly packed. Some really bored-looking local kids were hanging out in the game room. Tourist families were excitedly buying tickets for the rides and golf. They seemed genuinely eager to pay $15 per person to go on about two crappy rides and hit a little golf ball on bright green carpet. I just could not get with the program. I opted out of going on any of the rides; in fact, I just sat there and stared blankly, dazed by the spectacle. Some fat guy yelled at his kids while they did the bumper boats, insisting that they turn this way or that. A toddler with a severe rash and snot dripping out of his nose stood and stared at us. Then he stuck his finger up his nose, pulled it out, and sucked on it. An entire family, all wearing matching orange t-shirts, waited in line. The train when whistling by; it had one passenger. He did not seem particularly thrilled.

Okay, it's not Disneyland. When you go to Disneyland, you tend to get into it because there's really nothing else to do besides go on rides, stand in line, go on some more rides, walk around, stand in line again, go on more rides, buy some junk, trip over strollers, and have fun. You go there expecting to spend money, hang out with tourists, wait in line, and so on. If you don't like that kind of thing, you don't go. But here, in Leavenworth, there was so much real stuff to do that amusing oneself at this little "fun" center seemed stupid. Don't these people know what fun is? But then, the kids had fun on the bumper boats, and I guess if the kids had fun, then it wasn't such a bad thing. And all of the other tourists seemed to be having fun. What was my problem? I found it completely depressing to think that Leavenworth had sunk to such a new low. I used to despise the town enough when all it had was its faux-bavarian theme facades. Leavenworthless, the barbarian village, built to trap das tourists and relieve them of der money. Well, they were doing a good job of it now. What wouldn't they do to take a few more bucks out of our pockets? The worst part was that I was here spending my money supporting this fakery. Somebody shoot me, please!

Luckily, the kids didn't want to go on the train ride, and I insisted that we would not be spending another 10 bucks for them to play "golf." Thankfully, they wanted to go swimming instead, so we went back to the hotel and hit the pool. That's when it hit me. Sitting by the pool, gazing up at Icicle Ridge, I suddenly felt the urge to escape. I had to get the hell out of there, and now. After clearing it with the boss, I was tooling down the Icicle Road. Ten minutes later, I was heading up the trail to Mountaineers Buttress, rock shoes and chalk bag in hand. I climbed for only about half an hour, but it was absolutely awesome. An evening storm was whipping up, and as I climbed higher the wind started really gusting, at one point forcing me to stop and hang on tighter than usual to avoid being blown off balance. It was a rare treat to have Mountaineers Buttress all to myself. This late in the day, with clouds and wind blowing in, the usual crowds had departed for town. It was, to coin a John Muir term, sublime.

Completely transformed into Leavenworth tourists, Karen and I go dancing.

My respite was brief, but as I strolled through the Icicle Inn parking lot with scuffed, chalked hands, I was satisfied, even smug, as if by the mere act of climbing for only a short time I had become infinitely superior to the many tourists wandering absently around the parking lot and hotel lobby. Sadly, the feeling did not last long. The next day, we hit the road. Our mission: buy flowers for the rededication ceremony. We went to this store and that, as far as Cashmere, before we found the flowers we needed to make boutonnieres and corsages for the "wedding" party and a bouquet for the "bride." After that, we went to my grandma's house for a few hours to visit. Then we went back to Leavenworth. Doug and Lori were supposed to be in town already. The plan was that Doug and I would get together and escape to the Icicle or somewhere while the ladies and children went shopping or whatever. But three o'clock passed, then four, then five, and no sign of Doug and Lori. We walked all through town looking for them, then went back to the hotel to see if they had left a note, but nothing. Nada. Zilch. Karen vaguely remembered the name of the street they were supposed to be staying on, in a condo or something, so we asked a hotel clerk where that was and drove over there. It was six o'clock. They had just arrived after a five-hour drive over Stevens Pass, most of it spent stuck behind an accident on our own "state sponsored highway of death."

So after they got settled in, we went to a restaurant in town and ate dinner and drank beer, and by the time we got done it was 8:30 and getting dark. With Doug's son, Jonathan, as our designated driver, we drove up the Icicle to prepare the site for the big ceremony the next day. It was too late to go climbing but it was nice to be back in the Icicle, even if all we did is clear some rocks and mark a trail from the road to the big flat boulder by the creek. The mere act of grasping and repositioning talus blocks and boulders, although not climbing, was most satisfactory. Still, we chalked up before we went back, to make it appear that we had actually done some bouldering. Jon had scuffed his arm on a tree branch, and showed it off to Lori proudly, boasting that he had injured himself on a boulder problem. Lori, bless her heart, had no clue what was in store for her the next day.

Karen and I had to get up early the next morning to check out and then drive up to the site to get it ready for the ceremony. We put together a big arbor, then draped it with some white fabric and ribbon and a fake ivy garland, then tied flowers to it. It was lovely. The minister, Randy, and his wife, Debbie, helped out, then waited with us for Doug and Lori and their family to arrive. We waited. And waited. And waited. The appointed hour, eleven o'clock, came and went, but still no sign of them. I amused myself by doing "boulder problems" on the largest talus blocks, although I could by standing up reach the top of these blocks. Mostly I just grasped holds and made pretend moves, pulling here and stretching there, to relieve the boredom. Finally, about 11:20, Doug and Jonathan arrived. They had been waiting at the hotel for us, wondering where we were. Doug thought that perhaps there was some "miscommunication." You think? So anyway, Doug went back into town to get the family, and before too long they all arrived and came down the talus trail we had made, except for Lori, who was just figuring out that something was going on and wasn't happy about it. Either that, or it was that she was wearing a short dress and Doug was insisting that she hike down a steep talus slope. I thought for a minute that they were going to have a huge fight about it, so I made myself scarce.

Without going into details, the ceremony went off without a hitch. Lori was suitably surprised, Doug and Lori were happily rededicated (mushy stuff omitted), and after they reaffirmed their vows (and a group photo was taken) we packed up and went back into town for lunch at Gustav's. Now I don't like to complain, but back in the old days . . . there was no Gustav's. There was Das Berghaus, an old Russian Orthodox church building converted into a very casual restaurant, that was the popular climber hangout. They used to trade climbing photos for food, so there were always pictures of climbers on the latest routes to look at. I still remember Dane Burns' picture of Gwain Oka climbing "Dr. Leakey" which at the time was unimaginably hard (5.11). Seeing the many pictures inspired me to take some of my first climbing photos, but sadly Das Berghaus closed before I got any pictures up on the wall. Then it became Gustav's, a much more upscale, trendy, tourist-friendly place, but climbers still hung out there. After the place burned down, they rebuilt it into the present glossy faux-cabin motif you see today, all gussied up for the tourists. Nowadays you can barely get a table in the place. The food's still decent, and the beer's good, too, but it's a little too touristy for me. Nevertheless, there I was at a table for twelve, eating an early dinner at Gustav's. We had to wait despite having "reservations," and we had to move our cars out of the parking lot because some old guy from the Tyrol Hotel was chasing everybody out of there. But we finally got our food and everything was good again.

Well, almost. We had to go back into town to buy something for the kids. Why, I don't know. It seems like wherever you go or whatever you do these days, you have to come home with a souvenir. A hat, a t-shirt, a post card, something. In our case, it was hats. The kids wanted these goofy hats they had seen at the hat shop. Too numb to protest, I let them go, and sat outside on the bench with my head in my hands, lamenting my cruel fate. I looked up at the mountains rising above the town, and longed to be there, wandering among the pines and firs, through meadows, scrambling up rocks, feeling a cool breeze rising up from some canyon. I could no longer bear it. After what seemed an eternity, the girls had their hats, and once we got back in the car, I went straight for the highway and got the hell out of there.

About the only good thing that happened the whole weekend, aside from my 40 minutes of climbing, was getting carded at Safeway while trying to buy a six-pack of beer. According to the clerk, they have a lot of underage drinkers in Leavenworth because, and I quote, "There's nothing else to do in Leavenworth." I could not agree more.