North Cascades: more glaciers than all the other US parks put together

In the north of Washington State, against the Canadian border, the Cascades bristle with peaks, ridges and glaciers. The park has more than 300 of them, more than all the other parks in the contiguous United States put together. A single road crosses it, and almost everything else has to be earned on foot.

History and origins

These mountains are young, steep and very wet: the clouds from the Pacific empty themselves here. They long remained off the beaten track. Prospectors looked for gold here at the end of the 19th century, without much success. In the 1920s, the city of Seattle dammed the Skagit River to generate its electricity. The three reservoirs have become the park’s best-known scenery.

The park was created in 1968. The road across it only opened in 1972.

What to do there

• Diablo Lake: a reservoir of a very vivid turquoise green. The colour comes from rock flour, ground by the glaciers, suspended in the water. An overlook looks down on it from the road.
• Highway 20: it climbs the Skagit valley, runs along the lakes, then crosses two passes. Allow three hours from one end to the other, not counting stops.
• Washington Pass: just east of the park, an overlook facing a wall of granite spires.
• Cascade Pass: the park’s classic hike. The trail climbs in switchbacks to a pass surrounded by hanging glaciers.
• Ross Lake: a 35 km lake running up towards Canada, reached only on foot or by boat.
• Stehekin: a village of around a hundred inhabitants, at the end of an 80 km lake. No road leads there: you go by boat from Chelan.

Stories and good to know

• The park proper gets very few visitors: most people stay in the lakes area, which has a different status.
• The writers of the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac among them, spent summers alone in fire lookouts in these mountains, watching for wildfires.
• The park has no hotel or restaurant along the road.

Practical information for your road trip

• Getting there: the Newhalem visitor center is 2 hrs 30 from Seattle.
• Trails: many stay snow-covered until mid-July. The access tracks are sometimes in poor condition.
• Where to stay: in Marblemount, on the west side, or in Winthrop, a small Western-themed town, on the east side. There are campgrounds beside the lakes.
• Combine it with: Mount Rainier and Olympic.