August 9th-12th

North Cascades National Park

Washington

After an awesome time in Canada, we settled right back into speed limit signs printed in MPH and gas prices per gallon. Our first stop was driving the beautiful HWY 20 to the North Cascades National park.

Along HWY 20 we came across the town of Winthrop, WA. The main street still looks like an old western town.

A beautiful Overlook on our way to the Park.

The PCT! We would love to hike this trail someday.

Alright, now we are entering the Park boundaries. North Cascades is located in the Northern Central part of Washington State

https://www.nps.gov/noca/planyourvisit/upload/NOCAmap2.pdf

Beautiful craggy mountaintops are everywhere in this park and It’s surrounded by deep rainforests, full of moss-covered trees, slugs, and ferns.

When we arrive we wind our way through the North Cascades Highway (still Highway 20) which overlooks a beautiful valley with three reservoirs. A lot of the Hydroelectric energy for Seattle is generated by the Skagit River through a series of three dams in the park. We stopped at many of the pullouts. With wildfires nearby, some of the mountains were hard to see but they weren’t completely obscured.

We stopped at the visitor center and found there is an old-growth forest (our favorite!) with a short trail nearby in the town of Newhelm. Newhelm is a company town owned by Seattle City Light and it is populated entirely by employees of the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project or government agencies that manage the surrounding recreational areas, national park, and national forests.

After walking the trail we stopped in a small shop for ice cream.

Then we headed out to our campsite in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. We camped near a pair of majestic big-leaf maple trees in the rainforest. At our campsite we witnessed many creatures living all around us from a massive hornet to minuscule tree-frogs, slimy banana slugs, and even had a barred owl terrify us by landing on our car while we slept, flapping its wings against our tent.

These things are massive, gross, and everywhere! Thats one of the things with the Pacific Northwest, too many creepy crawlies.

Since it was nighttime when we were disturbed by an owl, we don’t have any photos, but check out the link to learn more about them. Be sure to listen to the audio files to hear their crazy hoots and get an understanding of how freaked out we were to hear them. Especially, since we didn’t know what they were at the time.

http://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/barred-owl

The next day we made our way up a treacherous, winding, and rutted gravel road to our trailhead for Hidden Lake. The parking area was busy early. This steep trail up to the top of a mountain was far more crowded then we expected. The first part is all forests, then you spend a long time walking through switchbacks while the trail is framed with beautiful wildflowers. Eventually, we made our way up to where the subalpine fir clings to craggy rocks and then no trees at all. In this area the familiar “Meep! Meep!” of the pika, our favorite rodent, can be heard. At this time of year, we had to scramble up a melting snow-field to get over the ridge that finally shows us hidden lake. We thought we would never find it and almost turned back just a little too soon. A woman with two dogs told us it was just ahead so we pressed on to the final goal. A beautiful sub-alpine lake. We could have hiked further to the lookout tower on top of the mountain but with the wildfires burning nearby we couldn’t get very good views of the area so after eating some snacks we made our way back down. We returned to the same campsite that we stayed at the night before.