The North Cascades

We arrived at the North Cascades National Park the last week of June during a 3-day 95-degree “heat dome” AND a park ranger told us that all the hikes I had planned to do were covered in snow and that we should have winter hiking skills and carry an ice ax. Interesting.

One paved road, the North Cascades Highway/20, runs east-west through this lightly visited National Park. Most of it is a wilderness that can only be accessed by backpacking or taking a ferry across Ross or Chelan Lakes. There isn’t a lot of infrastructure for visitors and most only see overlooks along Highway 20, which is technically part of the Ross Lake National Recreation Area. A lot of the hiking that we did was even on National Forest land surrounding the National Park.

We spent the first of two weeks on the western side of the N. Cascades in the National Park’s Newhalem Creek Campground. This beautiful campground was adjacent to the visitor center and had direct access to some easy flat walking trails along the Skagit River.

There were no hookups and it was heavily wooded which meant we had to rely on our generator instead of our solar panels.

Unfortunately for Michael, we were playing the game where I discover that things do not work and then he has to fix them. Our generator refused to charge our batteries and run our AC at the same time. Our propane regulator was blocking our propane flow and needed to be replaced (good thing we carry an extra one). The most ironic thing was we were a 2-minute drive from the Gorge Creek hydropower plant. You’d think they could have diverted a little bit of electricity to the campground.

Speaking of hydropower, there are 3 lakes created by dams on the Skagit River- Ross, Diablo, and Gorge Lakes, that provide roughly 25% of Seattle’s electricity.

The result is one of the prettiest lakes we have ever seen or paddled – Diablo Lake. The milky turquoise color comes from “glacial flour” – ground-up minerals washed down the mountains from melting glaciers. Over 370 glaciers melt into the Skagit.

By midweek, we had to go searching for ethanol-free gas for our generator. The closest we found online was 60 miles east in the town of Mazama (population 150) taking us through the entire park. We packed our dinner and planned to explore more overlooks along the way.

The route took us over Washington Pass which was a nice surprise, as we hadn’t seen pictures before. We spent some time walking around the various overlooks.

We also stopped at the Maple Pass trailhead that we were hoping to hike on July 4th. And, finally fueled up at the cutest gas station.

Later that week, we celebrated our 15-year wedding anniversary with a beer at the summit of the Thunder Knob Trail, overlooking Diablo Lake. And afterward, drove over the Diablo Dam.

On Saturday, we moved over to the foothills east of the mountains, to Riverbend RV Park in Twisp for another week. The eastern side of the Cascades is usually very dry and brown (although not this year) and they never allow fireworks. It was a park full of refugee dogs (and their owners) fleeing their hometown Independence Day fireworks.

Since we couldn’t do the hikes we had planned due to them still being snow-covered, we searched for alternatives. We found the Cutthroat Lake Trail, which finally took us to views of the jagged mountains, cascading waterfalls, and an alpine lake that the N. Cascades are known for.

We also found out that the entire Methow Valley area we were staying in, including the towns of Mazama, Winthrop, and Twisp, is known for nordic skiing and mountain biking trails.

We overestimated our mountain biking skills and did the 14-mile Buck Mountain Trail. 7 miles up and then 7 miles down. Also, there were cows and cow poop which I was covered in by the time we finished.

By the following weekend, we completely lost our patience with not being able to do any higher elevation hiking that we came here to do. After reading all the recent trail conditions, we decided if we bought hiking poles and used our microspikes, we could do 2.5 miles out and back on the Maple Pass trail without needing an ice ax (what in the world do you even do with that?!?).

The majority of the first 2.5 miles had only patchy snow and was no problem. It was filled with gorgeous views, wildflowers, and alpine lakes. It was so amazing and we finally could see why these mountains are nicknamed the “American Alps”.

After a steep climb of a couple of hundred feet through deep snow where we could hardly follow footprints, we came to our stopping point. 360 degrees of the most beautiful mountain views, we weren’t even upset that we couldn’t finish the trail.

Exhilarated from the Maple Pass Trail, we decided to do another 5-mile hike to Blue Lake. Even though this trail actually had more snow, it didn’t have a lot of elevation or exposure.

But it did have some interesting wildlife! As we were hiking, we ran into others that were being followed by a mountain goat! We all got off the trail to give her space. Finally, she gave up, but the entire thing was a little scary.

This amazing day wrapped up our time in Washington, one of our favorite states thus far. We’re headed east, to Idaho!