Lakeview Point and Picnic Area

Lakeview Point is a public picnic area and viewpoint across from Stehekin’s post office. It’s a good pause for the picnic table, benches, interpretive waysides, and a broad view across Lake Chelan into the upper valley. Stehekin has no road connection to the rest of Washington: visitors arrive by foot, boat, or plane, then get around on foot, by bike, or by shuttle.

Look up-valley to McGregor Mountain and the three peaks in the notch beside it: Boston, Booker, and Buckner. Their snow usually lingers into early July. For a picture, keep the frame wide enough to include the steep valley sides; they make the valley’s scale and shape easier to read than the lake alone.

Those steep sides and flatter floor make the U-shaped trough left by glaciers. Thick ice carved the valley; the most recent advance ended about 11,000 years ago.

Stehekin’s name has more than one recorded meaning: in Lushootseed, a Coast Salish language, it can mean “the way through” or “turning around place”; in nxa’amxcin, an Interior Salish language, “mountain tops.” The valley has long served as a travel passage between Washington’s interior and the North Cascades.