Yogi’s guidebook had a small footnote in its
description of Skykomish that said that Andrea Dinsmore, hostess at Dinsmore’s
Hiker Haven in Baring, was willing to drive the eight miles to Skykomish to
pick up hikers and take them back to her place. I made the phone
call, and Andrea picked up on the second ring; I popped the question to her,
and she said she would be there in twenty minutes.
I had no idea what to expect in the way of
appearance or personality of Andrea Dinsmore. I had only read about her
and her husband, Jerry, and their home they had named Dinsmore’s Hiker Haven.
I knew that Andrea and Jerry were the last trail angels on the PCT before
crossing into Canada 180 miles away, and that they had opened their home to the
many weary and bone-tired hikers who had made it this far in their quest for
the Canadian border
.
Having finished my meal, I waited outside the
café for Andrea; it was cool, so I pulled my North Face jacket out of my pack
and put it on, but it was still cool. While I waited, I wandered up and
down Main Street, peering into vacant homes and business establishments that
had been boarded up. The hotel I passed coming into town had scaffolding
two stories high around two sides of the building.
The building itself
was constructed of wood, which meant lots of restoration work on the eaves,
soffits, window trim and door-frames, not to mention the wooden siding itself.
In my mind, I found it hard to justify the expense of the renovation
project, but it wasn’t my money and I didn’t have the vision for the building
that the owner had. I reckon people could say the same about the rusted
project cars that I was willing to spend time and money on, simply because I
could see the potential these vintage relics had.
Periodically a car would turn the corner next to
the hotel and drive up the street; I eyeballed the driver, especially if the
driver were a female to see if she fits the image of what I thought Andrea
Dinsmore might look like. After thirty minutes, an SUV turned the corner
and pulled up in front of the café, and without any introduction, I knew that
Andrea had arrived.
She was small, but not petite; she was stocky,
but not matronly. She couldn’t see over the top of the car door window
frame, so I would say she was short. In stocking feet, she might be all
of five-two. Most people smile, but Andrea grinned; no, she beamed like a
mother welcoming her child home from college or from a military deployment.
Instantly, you know you like her. Her face was more round than
oval, and was framed by her brownish-blond hair that she wore shoulder length
with bangs that almost touched her eyebrows. There was only a trace of
wrinkles around her eyes and the corners of her mouth, not as the result of
hard living, but from grinning so much. Her teeth were white, with a
small gap between the two front teeth, and besides her sparkling eyes, when she
smiled, they were the most prominent feature of her face. Her countenance was
fresh and enduring; as a stranger, I knew I had come home and would be well
taken care of.
On the short drive to her home across the
railroad tracks in the forested town of Baring, I learned that she had joined
the navy just out of high school, was a former long-haul truck driver, and she
and her husband, Jerry, who was a diesel mechanic by trade, had been watching
over PCT hikers since 2003. The license plate on Andrea’s vehicle reads
PCT Mom, while Jerry’s said PCT Dad.
It was Andrea who would alert Skykomish search
and rescue personnel when a hiker was presumed lost or stranded, and who most
often had to deal with frantic parents who called asking about the status of
their overdue hiker. Unlike other trail angels farther down the trail,
her concern for hikers took on a more heightened urgency, as her place of
refuge was at the northern end of the trail, only 180 miles from the Canadian
border. By the time hikers reached her place in mid-September to
mid-October, often winter snows in the North Cascades had started to fall,
sometimes shutting down the trail, leaving hikers stranded and in need of help. And it was Andrea who summoned that help.
Their home was set back from the main highway,
somewhat isolated in the tall trees, and was a perfect setting for housing a
group of noisy hikers that on any given night in September, when the hiking
herd was approaching Canada, could number a dozen or more.
When Jerry and Andrea bought the home and
property, it came with a four-bay garage. Jerry used two bays for working on
vehicles, which included keeping the town’s school bus running, one bay for
storing hiker resupply packages and auto parts, and the last bay served as a
dormitory for visiting hikers.
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