This Saturday we drove up to North Cascades National Park. We would have loved to snag a coveted backpacking permit but, as we suspected, they were gone since Thursday. That meant the lovely 12 miler was gonna be a day hike. It actually was quite an easy hike and even the parking lot starts off with a great view.
We got up there early had a delicious omelet breakfast at a cute diner near the park entrance and then started up the Cascade Pass Trail. It has about 30 switchbacks which then open up into some fantastic delicious mountain views as we rounded around to get to the view of the pass. That was about 3.7 miles in.
Then we veered off to the left and hiked the Sahale Arm Trail. On the way we walked the ridge surrounding Doubtful Lake, so beautifully blue, and all the waterfalls feeding it. Some parts got pretty steep and the climb to the top was more of a scramble than trail. The hike can go all the way to the top of the peak so you can look over it, but it requires some climbing gear so we stopped when we got to the snowfields. We probably hiked to about 1600ish feet.
The best part was that the layers of mountains peaked out the higher up we climbed. Every time we thought that was all the mountain peaks another range would slowly poke up. Mt. Baker even managed to squeeze between some other peaks so we could see it. The Hidden Lake Hike we did last year felt like this one too but no where near as many peaks and constantly increasing views.
The day started out quite cloudy but as we ate our chili mac :) on top of our peak the sun started to push through the clouds and we got a sunny, & hot, hike back down. We spent the whole day up their wandering around dipping our fingers in alpine lake water, grabbing handfuls of snow, and saying 'wow.' It was exactly the hike we wanted that weekend, next up snagging one of those overnight passes!
it doesn't look steep or far but we hiked up to that very last large snow patch at the top
awesome pics!
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