Maple Pass Loop Splendor

Our favorite hike of the trip thus far, this 7 mile 2,000 ft. loop day hike was a fantastic sampling of everything the North Cascades has to offer.  We saw glacial lakes, unfamiliar flowers, fantastic meadows, and big 360 degree views for 5 of the 7 miles.  From Maple Pass, we could see legendary Glacier Peak and even Mount Rainer in the distance.

It's difficult to find really good loop trails, and this one is a gem.

We started at 4,900 feet, and climbed steadily for 4 miles traversing two mountain passes.  And when we finally reached our high point on a flank of Frisco Mountain (6,900'), we started a bone jarring 2,000 ft. descent in 2 miles winding our way along a knife’s edge ridge.  It’s another one of those places where you keep thinking to yourself, “I can’t believe I’m actually hiking in such an otherworldly place.”

Although this is one of the most popular trails in Washington State, we ran into very few people.  The ones we did meet, however, were fascinating.  One couple from Tacoma caught up to us at Heather Pass, and hung with us for a while.  They were part of an online group called Pacific Northwest Hikers, and seemed interested in us coming all the way from South Carolina to hike in the North Cascades.  They took several photos of us approaching Maple Pass before parting ways, and the gentleman told us our story and photos would be showing up on their site.

When a second group of 11 hikers later caught up with us, we found out they were from the Northern Applachian Trail Hikers Club.  We think they were mostly from the New England area, and were extremely friendly and curious about our adventures.  One of them asked about the debacle known as South Carolina politics and our history of unscrupulous politicians.  We politely declined to participate in that discussion.

In the right circumstances, social interaction on the trail can be one of the most rewarding parts of hiking.  I still say you can have more open, direct, conversation with people on the trail than you will ever have in a church, bar, or most any other place on this planet.

 

We are checking out of the quaint, peaceful Freestone Inn today, and headed out for one last overnight backpacking trip in the North Cascades before heading back west tomorrow afternoon to Orcas Island.  From that point on, there will be no hiking reports, because there will be nothing but R&R for our last 5 days.  To quote a man we passed a few years back hiking in Linville Gorge, "My legs is burning!"

 

 

 

 

Cascades, Phase Two

For the first time since our departure, I'm going to actually get us up to real time on the blog.  It may not make much sense, since we arrived earlier in Mazama and each of us promptly had four drinks.  Nevertheless, it will be fun for us.

Yesterday, our last at Mt. Baker, we took off on a hike to Hannegan Pass.  The lady at the information desk told us this would not be a good hike, because it was all below the tree line.  We went anyway.  So, really?  You call THIS below tree line?

Ruth Mountain and Hannegan Pass to the left

View from the trail

Mount Sefrit

We ate out our last night in Glacier at Graham's.  Just think of an upscale Esso Club in a town smaller than Central, SC.



This morning we took off from Glacier, Washington to Scenic Highway 20 and the incredibly beautiful North Cascades National Park.  The scenery is jaw dropping, and the crowds similar to a weekend ride up Highway 107 from Walhalla.

So, here we are in the Eastern Mountains of Washington State in a place called Mazama.  Even smaller than Glacier, it is a true gem, with wonderful hospitality.

 

Diablo Lake, the most beautiful of them all

Washington Pass and Silver Star Mountain

The picture can't do justice to the beauty of this area.

We will be hiking these mountains the next three days.

Unbelievable

A beautiful tribute to Silver Star mounted at Washington Pass

Star insisted we get a photo of this Stafford poem 

        

Nooksack River Hike

We just returned to the cabin from a four mile river hike along the Nooksack River called the Horseshoe Bend Trail.  Star says it’s her new favorite river hike, which is a strong statement considering we have hiked the Chattooga, Snake, Elwha, Yellowstone, Saluda, and Teton amongst many others.  The foliage is green like home, but that’s where the similarities end.  Huge ferns,  moss hanging from trees six feet and more in diameter, berries, tiny flowers, and hard woods with leaves bigger than my head crowd the trail.  (That slightly overblown sentence is courtesy of Star.)
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The river forms at the Nooksack Glacier 20 or so miles above where we were hiking, and has a hypnotizing blue-green tint.

 

 



A tree grows out of the stump of a former Douglas
Fir tree.

 

I'll buy a beer for the first person to tell me what this is growing from this tree.  A fungus? 

 

 

 

July 24-25 Skyline Divide

We have located internet service at Chair 9 Restaurant and Bar in quaint Glacier, Washington, where  I have been catching up on our adventures thus far.  We just finished up a full rack of ribs, and I'm about ready for a nap.  I'm surprised to still be upright after our overnight trip on the Skyline Divide.

Whew, we don’t want a rematch. 

The weather was once again beautiful, as it has been since we arrived.  We had envisioned this one as a 1.5 mile, 1,500 ft. elevation trudge followed by some nice gentle ridge top walking to a small basecamp at the foot of Chowder Ridge.

Oftentimes, despite all the OCD planning, a hike just isn’t what you envision.  Once we reached the ridge top, we looked ahead at more steep ups and downs.  In reality, not much of this ridge top is flat.  Add in snowfields, increasing in both size and difficulty, and you have the makings of one tough hike. 

 

Eventually we lost the supposed trail to Chowder Ridge.  Since we had neither crampons, ice axes, nor machetes, we could not advance further.  At one point, the trail completely disappeared on the side of a steep ridge.  So, we started looking for a place to set up camp with water nearby, and were not being very successful.  After about an hour, we started heading off the ridge to a place called Dead Horse Basin.  You could see potential sites about 400 ft. directly below us, but a route to the basin was difficult to find.  We worked our way off-trail about 0.5 mile until we finally settled on a beautiful meadow where about a dozen small rivulets joined together to form a stream.  It was also home to millions of mosquitos, so for the first time ever, we donned our head nets.

It was nice getting into the tent at nightfall, and escaping the blood suckers.  The next morning the swarms of mosquitos had eased, but it was only the end of their work shift.  They were immediately replaced by yellow jackets and black flies.  We quickly ate, broke camp, and started picking a path back uphill to the ridge top. 

On the way back to the parking lot, we met a man looking for his hat.  He was originally from Georgia, but had lived in Washington State for years.  He wanted to talk about the Chattooga River and the copperheads.  According to this fellow, you could not go into the Chattooga River Basin without a shotgun due to these deadly creatures.  Wow, I wonder how Star and I have survived hiking the Chattooga for all these years. We also discovered from other hikers who stopped to talk that most people around here only understand where we're from if we mention Deliverance.  I suppose they expect us to hike barefooted and in overalls, not to mention with the aforesaid shotguns.

The Skyline Divide is an incredible place with jaw dropping scenery.  We are glad we did this trek, but it would have been much easier a few weeks later in the season without the interminable snowfields and insects.  Star has about 100 mosquito bites to confirm this statement along with photo documentation I will not post.

 

I will, however, post these photos from the hike.

 

 

                            The "ridge top"

 

                                 Our campsite

                                                                        The world's largest smiley face!

        Star modeling the latest in mosquito wear

  Mt. Baker from our campsite at sundown

 

Grand Total
3,200 ft. elevation
8.2 miles on-trail
2 miles off-trail

 

Ptarmigan Ridge Hike

On Tuesday, July 23rd, we took off on a 24 mile ride up the Mt. Baker Highway to Artists Point.  Along the way we stopped at Nooksack Falls, which is at a little non-descript pull off one mile down a gravel road.  The most powerful falls I’ve seen, felt, or heard since Lower Yellowstone Falls.  It really thunders, and from our vantage point, appeared to drop into the depths of the earth.

 

 

 

 

We continued up the Baker Highway through forests of Douglas Firs, Hemlocks, and other trees.  At mile marker 44, we pulled off the road just as the old bearded man (John Muir’s ghost?) had recommended at Grahams Store the night before.  We found a forest full of these babies.  Douglas Firs aren’t as big around as the great redwoods, but they are straight and extremely tall.  We were told that some of the trees at mile marker 44 are close to 1,000 years old.

 

 

We have driven the Going to the Sun Road, Tioga Pass, and the Blue Ridge Parkway, but the last 10 miles of the Baker Highway holds its own with all of them.  When we reached the parking lot at Artists Point, we were floored by the amount of snow remaining.  Then again, this is the place that holds the World Record for most snowfall in one year at over 1,140 inches.  Even the public toilets were still encased in snow.

 

 

Ptarmigan Ridge was our first hike of the trip.  It is consistently ranked one of the Top 5 hikes in Washington State.  Personally, the views top anything I have seen in any national park.  The glaciers are shrinking but dwarf most of the ones we saw at Glacier National Park last summer.  We crossed numerous large snowfields on a ridgeside until finally being stopped short of our destination before reaching the foot of Mount Baker.  On the way back, Star unintentionally slid down a short 10 ft. snow bank.  The damage was luckily only one scrape on her arm and a wet dirty bottom.  This one was extremely challenging for a “warm up” hike.

 

Star crossing one of about a dozen snowfields

 

 

 

                                               

 

 

     

                              Curtis Glacier

 

 

                                                 

 

 

              Mt. Baker up close and personal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glacier, Washington

We arrived in Glacier, Washington at about 6pm on July 22^nd.  The Ptarmigan Cabin is fantastic and just as advertised.  We have marveled at the incredible wood work of this custom built home, made from trees on-site.  There is a nice little trail down to the Nooksack River, which we can hear constantly from the cabin with the windows open.  We’ll put some photos of the river up in a couple of days.

We went down Grahams Store for supper, and ate in the yard out back.  We SPLIT a salmon wrap with sweet potato fries for $10, and both walked away as stuffed as could be.  Finally, after a 22 hour day, we hit the sack before one of us could do bodily harm to ourselves from our state of weariness.

 

Our thoughts are with my two children, Adrienne and Alex, as well as the entire McDaniel family over this world's loss of William McDaniel, a wonderful human being.

 

Sun setting on Mt. Baker from our campsite on the Skyline Divide Trail

 

 

Inside of the Ptarmigan Cabin, and Star trying to hide from the photographer

 

The North Cascades

It's that time of the year to fire up the old blog machine, and head west for some hiking and backpacking.  Actually, this time around we're not just headed west, but specifically to The Great Northwest.

After telling family and friends we're headed to the North Cascades,  the typical responses have been "Where?", followed by "Alaska?, Canada?, Glacier National Park?"   The North Cascades encompass several national forests as well as the North Cascades National Park.  The North Cascades contain most of the remaining glaciers in the lower 48 states; think old volcanoes, several hundred active glaciers, and 400 to 700 inches of snow each winter.  The national park is unusual in that it has no lodging, large gift stores, or the other typical amenities found in national parks.  It's camping, hiking, boating, and fishing in a true wilderness setting.

When we were living on the Olympic Peninsula a few years back, we could see the icy mammoth of Mount Baker in the distance.  We looked over several times and remarked how we would get over there and do some hiking.  Since the opportunity never presented itself, we are headed back to the Great Northwest for some unfinished business.

If anybody needs to locate us, here is our rough itinerary in Google map view.  Best of luck tracking us down!

On Monday, we will drive from SeaTac Airport to a cabin on the Noosack River near Mt. Baker.  It's on 5 acres just outside the metropolis of Glacier, Wa., and was built by the owner using trees from the current footprint of the cabin.  The view above is looking east towards the coast.  The yellow line on the right side is the Canadian Border.

On July 29, we will depart the Mt. Baker area and drive east through the North Cascades on the scenic highway to the teeny tiny town of Mazama, Wa. to hopefully take a day hike and an overnight 20 mile backpacking trip.

On August 1, we will head back west, spend the night in Anacortes, and head out to Orcas Island for our last 5 nights.  Star has us an Orca/Whale watching tour planned.  I hope it's a big boat.

If we find internet service, we will update the blog next week.  As we learned last year at Glacier National Park, that could be easier said than done.  Star says maybe we can find another laundromat and "borrow" their internet service.  Last year, we washed clothes while blogging at a place 15 miles out of the park.  Once we were done washing clothes, however, the owners started dropping huge hints aloud until we were forced to leave like the internet stealing outlaws we are.

Until then, here are a few photos of some area hikes we did this earlier this summer.  The creeks, rivers, and lakes in this part of the world are flowing as full as we have ever seen them.  In fact, as I type this we are in the midst of thunderstorms...again.

Eastatoe Gorge looking good!

Testing out our new equipment on an overnight trip in the Pisgah National Forest mid-June.

Chattooga River running above flood stage after the monsoons of July 4th week.

Dead tree, add water, more life