The Trail Log

Ciara and I were looking for a backpacking trip with little to no snow and ended up finding it oddly enough in North Cascades National park on the Ross Lake Dam trail (map) (Flickr Photoset). In order to do the hike you need to get a free overnight backcountry permit from one of the North Cascade Ranger stations scattered about. That was pretty easy and once we did that we made our way to the trailhead. We got a bit of a late start and didn’t begin hiking until around 4:00 that afternoon.

The trail starts off going down a trail and then turning into a road where it intersects with the dam. The views off the Ross Lake Dam are great so take a moment to stop and enjoy. After crossing the dam the trail goes gradually uphill as it snakes along the lake. There are a couple of small, easy creek crossings along the way. Eventually the trail forks. The right trail goes down to the Ross Lake resort so keep left.

About 1/3 of the way through the trail starts to get higher and break through the trees a bit providing great views of the lake. About half way the trail intersects with with the Sourdough Mountain Trail so keep right and work your way gradually down through more forests. The trail goes through another gradual uphill and crosses a couple of streams before finally finding its way down to Big Beaver Creek. The first campsite along the trail is the Pumpkin Mountain campsite but we continued on to the Big Beaver Creek campsite.

We couldn’t actually find the Big Beaver Creek site. It’s a big area and we found signs for the horse camp and the boat camp but nothing that resembled an actual campsite. Instead we tried to camp in the lowest impact spot possible - an area that is normally covered by water.

Grab our GPX track for the Ross Lake Dam Trail Reversing it will get you to the intersection of the Ross Lake Dam trail and the Big Beaver Creek trail.

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