Lake Chelan deep blue fjord
— the deep blue cut between the mountains.
Not only on a wall.
“Lake Chelan runs upcountry between the eastern wall of the North Cascades and the dry foothills above the Columbia, a long blue trough cut by glaciers and still cold. The town of Chelan sits at the south end. The upper end is Stehekin, reachable by boat, floatplane, or foot. The blue darkens the further you go in. By the time the ferry crosses Lucerne, the water is the colour of the rock under it.
Lake Chelan deep blue fjord, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Lake Chelan stretches about 50.5 miles up from the town of Chelan in north-central Washington, lying in a glacially scoured trough between Sawtooth Ridge to the south and the eastern wall of the North Cascades to the north. The lake's deepest point is roughly 1,486 feet, making it the third-deepest natural lake in the United States after Crater Lake and Lake Tahoe. Its surface elevation is about 1,100 feet, which puts the lake bed nearly 400 feet below sea level. The lower lake is high desert; the upper lake reaches into the temperate cedar-and-fir forest of the Cascades. The upper end is Lake Chelan National Recreation Area, bordered by North Cascades National Park and the Glacier Peak Wilderness.
The water reads cobalt at the south end and blackens upcountry. The colour is glacial. Meltwater off the Cascade icefields and snowfields carries a load of fine rock flour that scatters sunlight back as deep blue rather than the milky turquoise of shallower glacial lakes. The depth does the rest. Light below about fifty feet is gone. The eastern shore in the lower basin is sage and pine on bare rock; the lake reflects the western Cascades' more humid green only in the upper basin. The colour change between Chelan and Stehekin is the visible record of a 50-mile climb out of the rain shadow.
Stehekin sits at the head of the lake, a community of around 100 full-time residents with no road in or out. The Lady of the Lake ferry runs from Chelan up to Stehekin most days of the year, about four hours each way at the slow boat's pace, half that on the faster Lady Express. The other ways in are floatplane and the Pacific Crest Trail. There is a small lodge, a bakery, a post office, a one-room schoolhouse. Cell service is limited. The Pacific Crest Trail crosses the lake by passenger boat to High Bridge a few miles upvalley.