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.
Seattle has a group called the Thursday Night Afterburners (TNAB). They basically pick a pretty difficult hike every week and then on Thursday meet at the trailhead by 5:45 and start hiking. It makes for a very interesting Thursday night and the trip down, in which you’re hiking in the dark, is kind of a trip - literally.
Tonight we went to Mailbox Peak (good photos here, review here). It’s about 5 miles round trip with an elevation gain of almost 4000 feet, so you’re spending a lot of time going up; the whole point of a TNAB outing.
The parking lot is just a bit beyond the exit for North Bend on I-90. The trail itself starts off fairly level through some dense forest before turning into switchbacks on the way up. The switchbacks last about 1/3rd of the way up and they’ve been pretty well groomed so the trail is easy to find. After the first set of switchbacks you continue in pretty dense forest through a combination of switchbacks and straight up the mountain. There aren’t a lot of overlooks or flat areas here, you’ve still got to gain a bunch of elevation.
About halfway up the mountain you’ll come to a fork. Each fork has the telltale orange dots and the one on the right has a bunch of the dots on a tree. Either fork will get you to the top, I took the one on the right. After the fork the trail gets kind of dicey. You can continue to follow the orange dots and they’re pretty evenly spaced. You’ll be doing a bit of switchbacks and a bit of straight up and the actual trail starts to disappear. If you follow the orange blazes you’ll come to a tree with an orange X blazed on it. I have no idea what this is. At that point you’ll want to veer towards the left and get on the ridge where the trail is more pronounced.
You’ll continue along the ridge slowly getting high enough where the trees start getting smaller and you can see some views. In May, we started hitting snow here and by another 500 feet it was all snow. You’ll eventually come out on a boulder field. Continue on through the field into a grove of trees and when you come out of the trees you’ll see the slope up to the summit. It’s a pretty easy (but steep) climb to the top.
The hardest part with the Thursday Night Afterburners is the way down. We hit the summit a little bit before 8:00 PM I think as the sun was going down. We spent most of the hike back in pure darkness. You basically have to put your headlamp down, pay attention to the shadows, and place footing carefully. It was kind of crazy but it was a lot of fun. All in all, a great trip. I have some videos on Flickr and I’ll post the GPX file of the trip here as soon as I get it. All in all it was quite a workout.
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.
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.
