North Cascades NP, WA
2022 Parks Road Trip Diary: Days 43-45
North Cascades National Park seems like a great continuation of all the sweet hiking trails we’ve come to associate with this part of North America, but sadly due to closures and a tight timeline we were barely able to scratch the surface of what this park has to offer. We only spent one day here, but we know exactly what we’ll be doing when we come back!
Day 43: The Two Best Hikes in North Cascades?
Planning our two days in North Cascades
The main road, Route 20, defines most of the accessible parts of the park. There are a couple other interesting areas (North Ross Lake, Stehekin Landing) but they are very difficult to travel to (e.g. Stehekin can only be reached by boat or hiking). Still, the main road has plenty of trailheads to worthwhile hikes.
Since this day was Aug 2 and we needed to meet friends in Vancouver on Aug 12, that gave us only ten days to split across the three Washington national parks. Our plan was two here in North Cascades, three in Mount Rainier, three in Olympic, and two reserved for driving between them. That meant our plan here would revolve around the two best hikes we could find.
The two hikes that seem to be clearly top tier in this park (assuming you’re willing to do them) are Cascade Pass and Sahale Arm Trail (12.1 mi, 5000 ft elev gain) and Hidden Lake Lookout Trail (7.5 mi, 3300 ft elev gain). Unfortunately, Cascade Pass wasn’t possible because the road to its trailhead was closed. The closest spot you could park would have turned it into an 18 mi hike with ~6000 ft gain, which is not within our capability. We were so bummed by the timing; this road would be open only four days later.
Anyway, that meant the winners were Hidden Lake Lookout and… something else. For that something else, we found Maple Pass Trail (7.4 mi, 2200 ft elev gain) which was perfect because it was just a short distance from where we camped the night before.
Maple Pass
Maple Pass is a loop that winds its way around Lake Ann, and much of the trail is at alpine levels, so you get nice views for a significant portion of it.
The fact that it was a loop trail rocked! There-and-backs can be kind of boring on the way back sometimes, whereas a loop always keeps delivering.
After finishing this trail, we drove to our next campground. The Hidden Lake Lookout Trail is on the west side of the park, so we found a private campground in that area, near the town of Marblemount. Being close would hopefully give us an advantage in getting a parking spot at the trailhead of tomorrow’s popular hike.
I mostly didn’t like this campground (no potable water, porta potties, yuck), but one perk was again being right next to a running river: the Skagit River.
As we relaxed here, Judy decided to do further research about tomorrow’s Hidden Lake Lookout hike and discovered something important I had missed: the road to the trailhead was washed out and most people were saying you really needed a 4x4 vehicle with high clearance to pass it. As in, tons of potholes and sharp rocks that might scrape and the bottom of your car. Of course, that was something we could risk; our vehicle is not high clearance, but at least it’s an SUV. Though if we did damage it, that could seriously throw our trip off track.
This meant Hidden Lake Lookout was a no-go too. 😭 We couldn’t do either of the two best hikes here. We looked for a replacement hike that was within reasonable driving distance, but not seeing anything that really called out to us, we considered an alternative: leave now, giving ourselves an extra day in Mount Rainier.
When (not if) I eventually come back to this national park, I will absolutely do both of Hidden Lake Lookout and Cascade Pass + Sahale Arm. If I happen to find myself in Seattle for some reason, this park is only a little more than a two hour drive away. 🚐
Day 44: No Scenic View, Just Bellevue
We drove to Bellevue (just outside Seattle) to take care of standard chores like groceries and laundry. We finally had access to copious good asian food so we took advantage of that for both lunch and dinner. I also got a desprately-needed haircut.
This was also the second major metropolitan area we had spent any time in since we first hit the road 44 days ago (the first being Calgary). Having lived in major metropolitan areas for the last ten years, it felt like a return to normal life had arrived once again for us. Of course, it hadn’t really – we still needed to sleep in a campground tonight – but we could put that out of mind for the moment. That’s not to say we were itching to be done with the trip; the past couple of weeks were some of the best ever. But homesickness can easily exist alongside very positive emotions.
It was so late by the time we reached Mount Rainier that we took the first campground with available sites we could find, which was on National Forest land just outside the park. Figuring out what to do in Mount Rainier would be a problem for tomorrow. But there was plenty to look forward to. 🙂
post originally written 9/2, backdated to match reality