Absolutely certain she had flunked the state bar exam, my sweetie moped around the house in Seattle, reliving question-by-question where she supposedly dropped the ball.

Mickie was a free thinker, but I opted for a Biblical morale boost. We would lift our eyes unto the hills, in this case the glacier-draped east face of remote 9,220-foot Mount Goode in the North Cascades National Park.

We drove to Lake Chelan, rode the "Lady of the Lake" to Stehekin, boarded a Park Service bus up to the Bridge Creek confluence, and then hiked eight miles into the incredible cirque at the head of the north fork.

Couldn't do that today, or more accurately, our campsite would be a hike of at least 15 miles each way.

The upper Stehekin River road, leading to Cottonwood Camp, was washed out in our fall 2003 storm. The drenching did millions of dollars of damage to the recreation infrastructure (roads, trails, campgrounds) of Western Washington.

The road has never been repaired. The Park Service has warned -- accurately -- that it's likely to wash out near (aptly named) Car Wash Falls whenever we get a powerful early season storm.

Renowned recreation destinations, from remote Park Creek Pass -- where yours truly and buddies saw a mother bear and three cubs -- to the wonderful, cold swimming holes on Bridge Creek, are now out-of-reach for anyone with limited time to explore the "American Alps."

"Stehekin" is an old Indian term meaning "the way through." The road, originally a wagon route, follows an old cross-Cascade native trading route.

Sadly, a keep-everybody-out-but-us faction in the environmental movement wants the road kept closed. Current management of the park seems, privately, to agree. The North Cascades Conservation Council (N3C) has agitated for years for closure: One of its directors, Dr. Fred Darvill, found himself under personal attack for dissenting from the party line.

Huh?

An easy, inexpensive solution exists. Rebuild the road a few hundred feet to the east, using an old wagon route. Of course, this would mean a slight adjustment of the Washington Parks Wilderness Act, which designated wilderness within Washington's three national parks.

No Washington politician has ever trekked more miles in our woods than ex-Sen. Dan Evans, author of the parks wilderness bill. In recent testimony submitted to Congress, Evans said:

"It was my intent when I sponsored the Park Wilderness Bill of 1988 to protect the unique features of these splendid parks but not to make access more difficult for those seeking the unusual experience of a wilderness park.

"I believe very strongly that continued protection of our wilderness national parks depends on the active support of visitors, hikers and climbers who act as champions for our parks."

If access is reduced, warned Evans, parks will have fewer defenders and advocates.Curiously, the N3C has just launched a campaign to expand boundaries of the national park to protect additional areas, including mountains just west of the North Cascades Highway as it approaches Rainy Pass.

How can you ask Congress for more park, while at the same time working to distance visitors from its greatest beauty spots?

No politician has taken as much guff in this space as U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash. Our guy in Congress from Central Washington usually gets a Zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters. He led House floor opposition to the 2009 Omnibus American Wilderness Bill.

On this issue, however, Doc is doing the Lord's work.

He has introduced -- and the House Natural Resources Committee has passed out -- legislation that would nudge the wilderness boundary just far enough to the east so that the Stehekin River road can be rerouted to a wagon route used by. The river won't run through it.

Reps. Norm Dicks and Jay Inslee, D-Wash., influential on public lands issues, will hopefully sign on and pass Doc's bill in the Democratic-run House. Doc is not too popular on the left side of the aisle.

The conservation movement used the upper valley to create the national park four decades ago. A film, "Wilderness Alps of Stehekin," showed Sierra Club nabob David Brower taking his family on a pack trip to Park Creek Pass.

As state Sen. Linda Evans Parlette of Wenatchee has pointed out, the road to Cottomwood Camp long predates the national park, and was built over 100 years ago in the late 19th Century. Its main traffic, in recent years, has been two or three park shuttle buses a day.

The state's congressional delegation should put its foot down: Park expansion is out if the upper Stehekin River road remains washed out.

Natural resources should not be "monopolized for the benefit of a few," Theodore Roosevelt said a century ago. The maxim, meant for timber and mining barons, likewise applies to preservationist absolutists.

The Bridge Creek backpack was therapeutic. My office phone rang weeks later, bringing a command from Mickie to pick up a couple bottles of bubbly on the way home. "She passed the bar: Whoopie," friend Valerie Bystrom shouted in the background.

As I put down the phone, the order was revised upward: "Make that three bottles. And I want good stuff." It was celebration time back at sea level.