Okanogan-Wenatchee: The Dry Side of the Cascades
Near Leavenworth, Washington
Cross the Cascade Crest on Highway Two from Stevens Pass, or on Highway Ninety from Snoqualmie Pass, and within twenty miles the landscape converts. The Douglas fir and hemlock give way to ponderosa pine. The moss and rain give way to bunchgrass and basalt and a sky that is reliably blue. The Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest covers about one and a half million acres of the eastern Cascades and the Columbia Plateau edge, the rain shadow country that the mountains create.
The forest runs from the Canadian border south to Yakima, encompassing the Wenatchee Mountains, the Methow Valley, the Chelan highlands, and Mission Ridge. It is the other side of the range that most visitors to the Olympic Peninsula or the North Cascades never see, and it operates under a different ecological logic.
Fire is the fact here rather than the exception. Ponderosa pine forests evolved with frequent, low-intensity fire, and the century of fire suppression that the Forest Service practiced after nineteen oh five left the eastern Cascades with a fuel load the forest was not built to carry. When fires do burn now, they burn hotter and larger than the pre-suppression pattern allowed for.
The Methow Valley, which cuts into the eastern Cascades near Winthrop, is a case study in the tension between recreational economy and fire risk. The valley has become a destination for mountain biking, cross-country skiing, and river recreation. It has also burned severely in recent years. The residents have largely stayed.
The Wenatchee Valley at the forest's southern edge is the apple-growing capital of Washington. The orchards depend on water that originates as snowpack in the Okanogan-Wenatchee high country. The forest manages the watershed. The watershed makes the fruit.
