Well I finally found a place in my mind to rival the beauty of the Colorado Rockies. I think I’ve fallen in love with the northern Cascade Mountains in Washington. They’re not as high as the Colorado Rockies, but they are more jagged and, I think, more picturesque. There are also a large number of glaciers which means that many of the peaks are snow covered year round. Another great thing about it is that there aren’t many people. Finding a campsite in August has been no problem at all, though I have been trying midweek. Of course, I haven’t been to the Canadian Rockies yet, which is supposed to put their American counterparts to shame. I can’t wait.
On Sunday afternoon I drove up to Baker Lake. It’s in the Mt. Baker – Snoqualmie NF. Another thing about Washington is that it has great names like Snoqualmie, Snohomish, Sammamish, and a hundred other places ending in “mish”. Anyways, I wanted to get us both out for some exercise so we drove 10 miles up a dirt road (after deflating my tires a bit so it wouldn’t be so rough) to hike the trail up to Anderson Lakes. It was late and still pretty overcast, but it felt good to get out and Abbey enjoyed the lake when we got there. On the drive up I had spotted a few good possibilities for boondocking so I wouldn’t have to drive all the way down that dirt road again ‘til morning. The best one was a little down off the road overlooking the valley which was still clouded over when we got there.
In the morning I was pleasantly surprised to see a mountain, which I figured was Mt. Shuksan, peaking out above the clouds in front of us. 
It’s a pretty cool thing to be above the clouds, especially when you’ve driven there. I got a few good pictures before I glanced to my left and saw Mt. Baker, the highest peak in the area, was staring right down on top of me from the west. 
It was a spectacular view of the heavily-glaciated peak, the same one I saw from the kayak in the San Juans only A LOT closer. What a campsite. Probably my best one yet! 
After eating breakfast and soaking up the view for a while, we drove back down the 10 mile dirt road only now it didn’t seem so bad. I wanted to try and get Abbey out again because I knew the next day I wanted to take a tough hike without her. So we drove up another dirt road, this time for only 7 miles, to the trailhead for Sauk Mt. The clouds were still kind of thick and it was already afternoon so we ate lunch first. After lunch Abbey wanted no part of hiking up a steep trail (how did she know it was going to be that steep?) so I set off on my own. Well, me and the 40 other people who were hiking the trail that day. It was a good thing that Abbey didn’t go because it was one switchback after another for 2 miles, but it was worth it when I finally made it to the top. The clouds lifted enough to see many of the surrounding peaks, though not the tallest ones. 
At the top I met a nice older couple who lived in the San Juan Islands and had a real sweet German Shepherd with them. Believe it or not, her name was Abbey too, so I had to get a picture of her. 
I spent a while on top talking to the couple and a father and daughter who came up soon after. The daughter goes to school at Mt. Holyoke in western Mass. so they knew where Saratoga is. With Abbey I usually don’t get to sit and enjoy the view so it was nice to stop for a while at the top. That night we camped just outside North Cascades National Park at a forest service campground on a creek.
Of course, I took Abbey down to the creek that night and the next morning before driving up to the Cascade Pass trailhead. I had read in a guidebook that the road was really rough and I had originally figured that I would have to forgo this trail, but at the ranger station I found out that it had recently been re-graded and it wasn’t so bad. With my tires still deflated, it wasn’t too bad. At least it was only washboard for about 2 to 3 of the 13 unpaved miles. I think I got a few funny looks when I pulled into the parking lot at the trailhead. Needless to say I was the only motorhome in the parking lot. Poor Abbey got locked inside again, but she would’ve never made it. I thought Sauk Mt. was bad, but I thought the switchbacks to Cascade Pass would never end. 
They lasted for nearly 3 miles before the trail leveled off for the last half mile or so. But the views at the top were worth it. 
It didn’t take too long either, so I hiked up further still toward the Sahale Glacier for some more spectacular views. 
This was the type of hike that I loved last year and haven’t had many of yet this year. It got me excited about hiking again just when I was starting to get a little bored with it. The only problem was that the batteries in my camera died and for some reason I only had 3 spares in my pack. One of them fell out at some point. So I didn’t get as many pictures as I wanted to, but the pictures never do the views justice anyway. Five hours after starting I was back down at the RV letting Abbey out of her “cell”. She was pretty excited to get out of there even though it wasn’t hot at all.
A cool thing about North Cascades NP is that it is split in two and between the two halves is Ross Lake National Recreation Area. The great thing about this is that dogs are allowed on trails in the NRA. Since Abbey didn’t have much of a day while I was hiking to the pass, the next day I had picked out a few trails that she could go on, both with water nearby. After doing a short hike in the morning near the river and having lunch, we headed out on the Diablo Lake trail. There was a sign about mountain lion sitings at the trailhead so I was a bit more alert than usual. I was just thinking that I have never run into any large animals on the trail in over 11 years of hiking with Abbey when she stuck her nose up in the air and jumped up on a small embankment on the side of the trail. Right away I saw a bear cub and its mother about 20 yards off the trail. Luckily Abbey didn’t see them so I pulled her back real quick. The cub scrambled up a nearby tree but the mother only put her nose in the air checking for what was there. I don’t know if she saw us, but I didn’t stick around long to find out. After backing down the trail to what seemed like a safe distance I turned around and got out of there in a hurry. I had planned on doing a longer hike, but I wasn’t going any further after that. Instead I drove to our next campground, which was on a lake, and let Abbey swim for quite a while to make up for the lost hiking. 
The next day we did another hike that Abbey could go on and I could take it easy again. I wanted to give my knees a few days off before doing another big elevation hike. On Friday, after 2 easy days, I left Abbey in the RV and hiked to the top of Maple Pass. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, but the views from the top were as good as I expected. 
On the way up I kept crossing paths with a group from the Appalachian Mountain Club, most of whom were from the northeast. It seems like I’ve been meeting more people on the trail lately. 
After the hike we left the beautiful Northern Cascades for the drier climate of the Okanogan Highlands. More on that next time.
Lake Ann
More from Maple Pass