Way Out There In North Cascades National Park

The motorboat pulls away and disappears across Ross Lake, leaving us in a silence as expansive as the wilderness surrounding us. We shoulder our backpacks and hike up the Big Beaver Trail through a forest drunk on photosynthesis. Ancient cedar and Douglas fir trees rise taller than it seems our necks can tilt backward to view them. We pass red cedars as thick as 15 feet at their base—trees that germinated a millennium ago, around the time that Leif Erikson sailed the East Coast of North America. True to the trail’s name, we pass sprawling beaver ponds.

On our second day, the scenery keeps growing more dramatic. We cross over raging Little Beaver Creek—grateful for the bridge spanning its snarling whitewater—and hike up its valley, where one waterfall after another tumbles hundreds of feet down soaring cliffs. Nearing Whatcom Pass, at 5,206 feet, we get views of 8,236-foot Mount Challenger and the heavily cracked face of the massive Challenger Glacier. Beyond it stands a thicket of spires and peaks that may bear the most descriptively accurate place name on any map: the Picket Range.

My friend Gerry and I are backpacking 40 miles across the top of one of America’s most ruggedly mountainous and most overlooked national parks: North Cascades. Three hours from Seattle—farther away than Rainier or the Olympics and mostly not visible from the city— North Cascades protects a huge swath of old-growth, temperate rain forest and steep, jagged peaks that harbor the greatest number of glaciers in the Lower 48, at least 300 of them. Unlike many popular parks, North Cascades has little development or infrastructure—undoubtedly one of the reasons it sees so few visitors. In fact, 93 percent of the North Cascades National Park Service Complex—which includes three units, the national park plus the adjacent Lake Chelan and Ross Lake national recreation areas—is designated wilderness, named for the first director of the fledgling National Park Service, Stephen Mather.

North Cascades differs from most other parks in another significant way: You can’t see most of its severe, natural architecture from any road. Just one snaking strip of pavement, Highway 20, crosses the park; and while it’s a scenic drive (closed in winter), it affords glimpses of the taller peaks behind the forested slopes rising on all sides. The valleys of the North Cascades are so deep and steepsided that you have to get up high to experience the majesty of these peaks. And the only way to do that is on foot. For that reason, North Cascades has always been a mecca for backpackers and climbers willing to invest the extra degree of sweat and effort required to earn the dividends: long vistas of the most vertiginous and icy mountains in the contiguous United States.

If the North Cascades are remote and untrammeled, the hike from Ross Lake to Hannegan Trailhead is downright lost. Climbing over three passes— and at times being a hard, two-day hike from the nearest road—you will encounter very few other people. I’ve day-hiked, backpacked, and climbed in many U.S. national parks, but the North Cascades is where I go to really get far away from civilization. In other words: It’s exactly the kind of place we go backpacking to see.

Backpacking From Ross Lake to Hannegan Trailhead

The 40-mile, east-west traverse from Big Beaver landing on Ross Lake to the Hannegan Trailhead normally takes four to five days and requires a vehicle shuttle. Take a water taxi to the eastern end of the Big Beaver Creek Trail at Big Beaver landing, provided by Ross Lake Resort; reserve it in advance. If you don’t want to take the water taxi, start hiking at the Ross Dam Trail, which begins at a parking area near milepost 134 on State Route 20, and hike the seven miles, mostly along the shore of Ross Lake, to the eastern end of the Big Beaver Creek Trail (making it a 47- mile trip).

A free backcountry permit is required for backpacking , but reservations are not accepted. Because the park sees so little visitation, permits are not difficult to obtain— except for the very few popular backcountry campsites (including some on Ross Lake, but none on this hike). Get a permit at the Wilderness Information Center in Marblemount the day before or the morning you intend to start your trip.

Contact: Wilderness Information Center, Marblemount, (360) 854-7245.

Michael Lanza writes about his outdoor adventures, many with his family, at his blog and website, The Big Outside, and is the author of the National Outdoor Book Award-winning Before They’re Gone—A Family’s Year-Long Quest to Explore America’s Most Endangered National Parks.