WASHINGTON: Oh, Canada!!!

From here on out, the weather can be a bit of a crap shoot. If luck is on your side, you'll hike out of the lowest point on the trail on the Columbia River, and at the top of your steep ascent you'll find sunshine and clear views. If not, well then you're looking at a rather moist journey to Canada.

Again, gear becomes primary. Wet for days at a time, hikers are prone to hypothermia in these parts. And a bad decision could mean a premature end to their journey after coming all this way. What you wouldn't give for a dry floor and a solid roof over your head, though.

As it happens, there are a handful of shelters along the trail. They've been the subject of heated controversy over the years. The current thinking, in line with the Wilderness Act of 1964, is that there should be some land preserved where man is just a visitor passing through and not there to remain. The thought being, presumably, that a man-made shelter suggests some kind of permanence. And so what shelters exist, are slowly crumbling back into the earth.

But at least the earth is soft here. Spongy even. Covered with mushrooms and toadstools. And colors to provide a feast for the eyes ­ bright yellows and deep crimson. And hills covered with huckleberries to provide a treat for the belly.

Washington is nothing if not picturesque. It offers a nice bit of serendipity for many a hiker. Expecting the landscape to be anticlimactic after leaving the Sierra Nevada, it can be downright stunning to see what the Cascades have to offer. Teetering on the knife-edged ridge in Goat Rocks Wilderness, or simply relishing the Yakima Indian-tinged names of trail towns along the way ­ like Skykomish or Snoqualamie ­ the state never disappoints.

Canada is so close now, you can practically taste it in the air. Offering the opportunity to come full circle, Mount Rainier like Mount Whitney before it, is a peak that does not lie on the official trail. But it beckons to you nonetheless. And climbing to the top offers a number of rewards besides the pleasure of simply having arrived. In the interior passageways inside the crater, you see igloos and other shelters fashioned out of snow. In fact, after the long climb, hikers sometimes hunker down for a cold night's sleep in these high perches and perhaps dream about how this very mountain, when it erupted 2500 years ago, formed the Puget Sound as we know it today.

Or maybe they're just thinking about how nice it would be to get across that border once and for all. Wouldn't it be great if you could just get there "as the crow flies?" Well, you would have saved yourself more than 1000 miles, for one thing.

Stehekin is the last opportunity for resupply before Canada. This is when hikers tend to start waxing poetic, with the end of their journey near at hand. All along the trail, there are trail journals where hikers register their impressions or home-spun words of wisdom. At times, they even leave notes on the trail for folks they know to be bringing up the rear. They may be out of touch with civilization, but the grapevine on the trail is well-developed.