Bob Can Do Everything; Be Like Bob
This is Bob; he lives in Stehekin. He gave our hiker family a hitch, then took us sailing on Lake Chelan in his 1800s-era Chinese Junk-style, 2-sail boat. A guy gave Bob the boat in exchange for promising to keep it sailing, so Bob sails it religiously, and was happy to teach some hiker trash a sailing lesson.
Bob is ex-Special Forces; he quit the Rangers after 4 years because he hated US military interference in Latin America in the ‘80s. Bob still proudly reps the Rangers logo however.
Bob went to tech college and spent his summers apprenticing to be a carpenter. Post-college, he worked as a river guide, then as an instructor in a mountain skills camp. Bob got heavily into rock climbing and alpinism, and is now an elite-level ski mountaineer and climber, with ascents all over the brutal North Cascades. Bob also enjoys ice climbing; once, he climbed the nearby Rainbow Falls — a rarely-frozen 300 ft waterfall — using screw anchors and ice tools that he metalworked himself.
Somewhere after college, Bob worked as a commercial fisherman for several summers in Bristol Bay (“made some real money with that”), learned how to sail, and spent a season sailing the Caribbean. He now says fishing takes too much time and abstains, in order to focus on his more important projects.
After school, Bob went to boat building school and became a master carpenter/woodworker. Bob’s carpentry projects include models, reclamation wood furniture, boats, and building cabins and houses along Lake Chelan. Bob built himself a workshop on his property (a 20'x30' two-story garage that rivals anything on HGTV or This Old House), and then he set to work building his own house.
Bob’s. house is a straw-bale style home, and features a front porch made from a water tower that he attached to the house and refurbished. The inside is a gorgeous, all-wood beauty, and features escape staircases, hidden cupboards, a swing made from old fire hoses in the kitchen, a rock wall with toprope anchors up the walls, a fireman’s pole from the upstairs loft down into the living room, a high-end steam shower and a roof sprinkler system that keeps the wildfires at bay. Bob’s bathroom locks via an old telemark ski binding that he converted into a deadbolt, and features an ancient, freestanding tub. His walls are covered in ice axes, route markers and mountaineering posters. He heats his home using a woodburning stove, and chops all the wood himself. The furniture is crafted by him, of course, and the living room features a 2-story rope climb up to the lofted ceiling, where successful guests can anchor into the bolts and write their name on his ceiling. Lately, he’s been making his window sills out of colored, polished concrete.
Bob is on-call 24/7 for his job with the town, where he’s in charge of maintaining the electrical plant and all powerlines. There’s also a fire truck parked in his yard, because Bob is a forest firefighter for the North Cascades/Chelan area he lives in. His backyard features a massive garden of delicious vegetables, and he’s planning on building a green house that surrounds his main house, so the family doesn’t have to get cold while gardening in winter. Bob grows high-quality kale that would make an LA girl drool and lives off kale Vitamix smoothies in the winter. He enjoys ripe fruit from his double peach and cherry trees daily.
Bob runs or bikes to work everyday. wearing a camo or plaid-colored kilt (“better mobility”). He recently took up being an arborist with his oldest son as a side job, and they’re locking down the local market for climbing and chopping trees.
Bob’s wife is an excellent homemaker, gardener and adventurer of her own, and works construction as her day job. Bob’s three sons are an arborist and skilled craftsman, an Outward Bound guide and commercial fisherman, and a Team USA Olympian biathlete, respectively. His youngest son recently appeared on the cover of the Patagonia catalogue and stole Bob’s sewing machine to make his own packs, down jackets and gear when he’s not training for the next Winter Olympics. (He’s in high school.)
His tiny Aussie is named Maya. According to Bob, she’s pretty useless but he was gifted her so he keeps her around. When Bob bikes to work, Maya rides in her own basket as her kilt-sporting owner pedals along
In his spare time, Bob enjoys paragliding off the dozens of 6,000 ft. peaks that surround Stehekin.
