North Cascades National Park

Author's Note: I was working on this post before departing for Hawai'i, and intended to complete it during the first day or so on the island... but the Island had other plans. We tried turning on our laptop after our first ride and found it dead under mysterious circumstances. We thought that maybe the jostling of being strapped to a bike for 25 miles may have knocked something loose (after having been dropped by the TSA earlier this year). We checked in on it over the next three weeks, seeing if it would boot, and always being disappointed. On the eve of our departure at the airport, Vitali pressed the power button once more. "You still have hope, huh?" I asked.

The screen lit up and the loading bar appeared as we stared at it incredulously.

We will have to chalk this one up to the Island telling us to focus on living in the moment. Mahalo!

We entered North Cascades National Park from the west, passing by Seattle on the way. As we drove through the narrow valley carved by the Skagit River, we saw thousands of white-bark pine trees dead on the mountains… Apparently the same fungus that was killing the trees in Crater Lake have already decimated them here. We were glad to see that as we headed deeper into the park that the devastation was much less – the mountainsides were still lush and green.

In actuality, we only entered the National Park while hiking Sourdough Mountain. The rest of the time we spent in the Ross Lake National Recreation Area, which lines the highway through the park. The National Park is split by the highway and both halves are for all intents, impossible to reach by car. Lake Chelan NRA, and the town at the head of it, Stehekin, is only accessible by foot or boat.

I had originally paid for a backcountry permit to go up to Thornton Lakes (which was my second choice on the application) – but we saw a warning about break-ins along highway 20 and decided to just stay in the front country. The fact that we'd soon be lugging all our gear on bikes for three weeks may have factored into that decision.

We arrived at our campground, Colonial Creek South in the mid-afternoon. We had a campsite right on Diablo Lake – but we were also sharing the shore with scores of others. The campsites were walk-in type, and they were all bunched up together. This was a you can hear your neighbor snoring situation… Thankfully the neighbors that were real close left the next morning, and no one occupied the site the second night. Someone showed up on the third, but he was very quiet.

Despite the less than ideal siting, we did have access right to the water, although it was too shallow to fish and swarmed with mosquitos. All manner of water enjoyment and recreation was happening – boating, SUP, canoeing and kayaking; although the water was a chilly 43 degrees, people were swimming too.

We went over to the fishing pier and Vitali tried his hand for awhile, but no luck. Vitali proclaimed he would walk back to camp and then swim back to me. I watched and waited for him to appear several hundred yards upriver... and then watched as he took one dip and then leapt back out, and went back to the shore.

The next morning we drove up to the Ross Lake Overlook and watched the sky for several hours -- a summer rainstorm rolled through the valley, and by lunch time had cleared. The rainstorm provided some much appreciated visual interest -- you can only take so many pictures of a clear blue sky.

An exhibit at the overlook described Jack Kerouac spending two months at the fire lookout on top of Hozemeen Mountain, where he, like many others in the face of such beauty and solitude, waxed poetic about his existence in the vast grandeur of such a place.

We stopped by the Diablo Lake Overlook too, which was much more dramatic than Ross Lake – the water is a striking, and otherworldly sea-foam green from glacial flour.

After that we headed down to Newhalem to do some of the more leisurely trails. Newhalem is a company town for Seattle City Light. The Skagit River has been dammed thrice here to generate power for the city, and while the lakes are stunning, the dams decorated and elevated above mere instrument, the accoutrements – high voltage cabling, massive electrical equipment, etc., etc., is a blight on the landscape.

I’m sure there’s a memorandum of agreement somewhere that outlines exactly what SCL had to do in exchange for damming the river – there is a very nice information center, park, restrooms, established trails, and interpretive signage all over the place.

We ended up strolling through a series of short trails along the river and Newhalem Creek, which were all very enjoyable and relatively flat, ensconced in dense foliage and canopy cover. We saw a lot of really nice hike-in campsites right along the river that were very private too.

We decided to hike Sourdough Mountain the next day, in preparation for Mauna Kea in Hawai'i. The distance and elevation gain between them is comparable – Sourdough being 12.25 miles and 5,100’ of gain vs the 13.5 miles and 4,900’ of gain of Mauna Kea.

The only difference being Sourdough starts around 1,100' and Mauna Kea around 9,200’. It was a good test run though – we felt strong on the way up and were not exhausted by the end, although our knees did hurt. We do have eleven 14ers under our belts, so are familiar with the effects of high altitude hiking, and hoped that a few days at Volcanoes NP in Hawai'i at 4,000' would be enough to acclimate for the climb.

I also wanted to hike it because on the map it appeared to have a commanding view of the immediate area – and perhaps down into Ross Lake, which is extraordinarily long and skinny, following the contours of the river valley. The overlook didn’t have a great view of it so I was looking forward to seeing more.

We ended up at the trailhead an hour earlier than I intended – I wanted to watch the sunrise at the Diablo Lake Overlook, but it was too foggy, so we just started hiking instead. Fog/low cloud cover in the AM seemed to be the pattern until the day we left, when it was also warmer.

We parked before the bridge that crossed into the residential area – adding almost a mile roundtrip, because the gate was closed. It opened a few minutes later but we were already walking so we just continued. We weren’t sure where the trailhead was – ‘behind the domed swimming pool’ was all the text description said – but eventually we found it, behind a garage that was marked “Flammable”.

The trail was exceptionally steep along the first two miles. We didn’t realize how steep until we were coming back down though… The text description of this trail stated that it featured “unrelenting switchbacks” and it was completely accurate. The trail surface was rocky, with loose gravel, roots, and dry dusty dirt.

We passed higher and higher through the fog and eventually we poked out above and started to see some of these views we were investing in. After a time we came upon the one stream crossing and were lucky that the snow bridge across appeared sturdy upon inspection – a few days later and we may have had a much harder time.

Near the summit, the trail continued to switchback relentlessly through a very steep meadow – and we were rewarded with stunning views of the Cascades, floating above an ocean of clouds as the mountains seem like to do in these parts.

This gave us a second wind as we pushed on towards the final climb. Maybe a half mile from the summit we encountered several snow fields which would be slushy on the surface on our return, and then finally we topped out and reached the summit.

There was a fire lookout at the top, and a beautiful view of Diablo Lake and the Cascades, at least when the low clouds moved through. Ross Lake was also barely visible in the other direction.

There was an open-air pit toilet, which I had seen pictures of elsewhere – North Cascades and Glacier are known for having open-air toilets with spectacular views. This one didn’t have a great view though.

When we summitted it was maybe 40% clear but the clouds came in thicker as we waited, and after 30 minutes of waiting we decided to head back down.

Of course – if we were there an hour later, we would have had beautiful 360 degree views from the top of the mountain, as we would realize on the way down when it cleared. It would have been sweaty though. We didn’t encounter another soul on the mountain until we had summitted and started coming back. We saw a total of six people, one toad, one grouse, and one deer.

Coming down the mountain was much worse then going up – it was steep enough to never be sure of the traction you had. My boots are also getting close to 800 miles on them and the soles are not as sticky as they were when new.

We eventually made it back to our car, bemoaned the state of our knees, stuffed our faces with some salty snacks and headed back to camp.

On our last day, we moved to the Newhalem Campground, which had a larger campsite with more sun. The restrooms were also perplexingly far away -- maybe a third of a mile in either direction. After staying at so. many. campgrounds. we have come to form an opinion on various aspects of what we've experienced, and in particular restrooms, since their existence and location become more critical than when you are living in a building. There's definitely a sweet spot for restroom locations. Yosemite's Upper Pines had way more than needed -- at any campsite you were within 300' of at least three, which was nice, but unnecessary. This campground was probably the worst.

On the way to the campground we stopped and hiked the Ross Dam Overlook Trail, which was a short trail to Ross Dam. “It’s only two miles!” I entreated to Vitali, who reluctantly agreed. Turns it out was a steep descent to the dam, meaning we’d have to come back up… Sourdough was still fresh in our minds, and fresh in our legs. It was really hot too, and before long we were sweating and contemplating our life's choices. Dams are always impressive, and this one was unique in that the concrete was waffled -- like roof assemblies, the waffle provides great resistance with minimum material usage.

We also stopped by Gorge Creek Falls, which was a spectacular series of falls into a narrow gorge, as its name might suggest. This proved a challenge to photograph as the best viewpoint was on a steel footbridge shared with vehicular traffic... the vibrations of footsteps and cars reverberating right up through my tripod and into my camera.

Our final stop for the day was the area around the Gorge Dam power building, and Ladder Creek Falls. There were two really nice bridges providing access to the trail, along with landscaped gardens. Ladder Creek Falls is actually lit from within the water, and a show runs at night. Unfortunately we were there in the afternoon so we didn't see it.

I was a little disappointed by how little of the park we were able to see. You really need to plan a point to point backcountry trip to appreciate this park and is something we will plan in the future.

The next morning we'd leave the park and make way for Seattle to pick up some items for our Tour de Hawai’i, and then head to our AirBnB outside the city to prepare.

The AirBnB was a hobby farm! We met Billy and Bubbles the Nepali goats, got to feed them, and enjoyed watching some chickens and ducks cluck and quack around. Billy and Bubbles were very friendly -- and would watch us through the window when we were in the living room. Hoping for handouts, of course!

There was also a black cat with socks who wasn't interested in us. 🙁 We had fresh eggs for breakfast and enjoyed the stay immensely. It was amazing – only 50 minutes from downtown Seattle but it was worlds apart – very rural.

We spent an entire day packing, going over checklists, checking bus schedules, calorie requirements, riding routes, etc., etc., and by the end of the day – we were ready to go. We got lucky in that the travel requirements into Hawai'i had just changed days prior -- we would not need to take a covid test prior to flying in, we would only have to upload our vaccination cards and fill out some paperwork. We would catch the flight to Kona the next morning, and were excited and apprehensive about what this adventure would have in store for us.