Coming home to the North Cascades

Driving north, memories flood in. Of white smoke filling the air above the mill in Darrington. Of passing the turnoff for the Suiattle River Road to the Miners Ridge trailhead and the transcendent glories of Glacier Peak Wilderness. Of crossing the glacial-blue Sauk River just before Rockport and turning onto Highway 20. Of catching a glimpse of snow peaks in the distance as the road curves toward Marblemount. Of selecting images for my book at the park’s archives there on a cold January day.

The highway bends again, past the Cascade River Road, the only car access into North Cascades National Park. I remember the last stretch of trail to Cascade Pass and its sublime views. We drive over the small bridge across Diobsud Creek, home to all five species of salmon and, in its alpine reaches, wolves. We slip through Newhalem, Seattle City Light’s company town, with its retro-modern cafeteria and pretty trails past lighted waterfalls, and pass Gorge Lake and the handful of houses at Diablo, where I lived in 2016 for three unforgettable weeks. Up a hill, around a curve, and we pause at the gated entrance to Diablo Dam.

A quick call to Seattle City Light’s dispatch and the gate lifts. We drive down the hill, across the dam, past a boathouse and ferry dock, and park at the Environmental Learning Center (ELC), where we will spend the next two nights.

We were there for Base Camp, the North Cascade Institute’s outdoor program for families and adults. Normally Base Camp includes plenty of time to interact with staff and fellow guests, terrific meals in the dining hall overlooking Diablo Lake, and opportunities to explore the ELC’s trails, libraries, and classrooms with programs and talks. This time, pandemic precautions meant most buildings were closed and the meals were takeout. Fine with us. We were there to hike, breathe the mountain air, and spend our first nights away from home since the start of the pandemic. When I read in an NCI newsletter that Base Camp would be open, I felt a visceral pull toward the North Cascades. I hadn’t been in more than a year, and I was overcome by a physical longing to be there. “Let’s do it!” Mr. Adventure said, and here we were.

Home again

After a quick orientation (keep an eye out for bears emerging from hibernation) and unloading the car (do we really need this much gear for two days?), we ate our takeout dinner (yakisoba with bok choy and kimchi) from the kitchen, then set out for an evening walk. Sunset may be at 7:45 pm, but darkness descends quickly in the mountains in spring. 

We walked back down the road, spotting an owl in a tree at the edge of a talus field. Hunched against freezing wind, hoods up against sideways rain, we peered into the Skagit Gorge on the downstream side of the dam and squinted up at the mountains surrounding us. Up the hill and back on Highway 20, closed about 10 miles further on and mostly empty of cars this time of year, we turned and looked back at the lake and dam and the twinkling lights of the boathouse and ELC in the distance. “I am as happy here as I have ever been,” I thought. Then I said it out loud to Mr. Adventure, who looked at me, smiled, and said, “I know.”

I hadn’t been in the North Cascades since September 2019, when I camped with a University of Washington honors class at Colonial Creek and hiked with them to Maple Pass. I’d forgotten how I feel when I’m here, and as we made our way back through the gloaming to the ELC, understanding dawned. I need to return to this place regularly. Part of me lives here.

Diablo Lake Trail

The next morning, fueled by French toast, sausage, and coffee, we headed out into the snow on the Diablo Lake Trail. When I lived here in autumn 2016, I hiked to places important in the history of the effort to create a North Cascades National Park. That took me all over the park complex and into the surrounding national forests, so I didn’t do a lot of hikes right at the ELC. Given the day’s wintry weather, we decided to stay local and on foot.

The trail winds through the forest, over small streams and then up and across the flanks of Sourdough Mountain. Beat poet Gary Snyder worked as a forest fire lookout on Sourdough in 1953 (he’d been on nearby Crater the year before) and was so moved by the experience that he convinced fellow beats Jack Kerouac and Philip Whalen to join him. Kerouac’s solitary stretch on Desolation Peak inspired Desolation Angels. Snyder’s poems “Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout” and “August on Sourdough, a Visit from Dick Brewer” disclose an interior landscape transformed by the exterior mountain world. 

When I lived here for those few weeks, my housemate Travis considered the trail up Sourdough Mountain a nice little evening run. Five thousand feet of elevation in five miles daunted me then, though now I know Mr. Adventure and I will do it someday. I want to see Snyder’s fire lookout and the views from the summit. “Slow and steady,” Mr. Adventure says. 

Hiking across Sourdough’s lower reaches, I was struck anew by the mountain’s sheer massiveness. As we climbed higher, glimpses of rock walls and boulder fields below them told a story of time and weather. Tree trunks, twisted by wind whistling down the river gorge, stood sentinel. Snow fell, sometimes drifting, sometimes dancing in the wind. White crystals rimed branches and rocks and fern fronds and Oregon grape leaves. We’d left spring behind and returned to winter. As the trail hugged the bottom of one of Sourdough’s prominent ribs, Diablo Lake started making brief appearances far below. The North Cascades Highway sliced into Ruby Mountain on the other side of the gorge.

Ross Dam

Then, a clearing, with transmission lines overhead. We stopped to peel off layers and glug some water, and the sun broke through to warm us. A little more elevation gain, then we started to descend, down toward the end of the trail. We stopped at a small overlook with a big view of Ross Dam and its distinctive waffle pattern, and I tried unsuccessfully to imagine what the Skagit Gorge might have looked like before the dams were built. 

Another half-mile downhill and we reached a suspension bridge to the other side and one end of the trail. The gorge is less than 200 feet wide here. As we refueled with a snack and water, a Seattle City Light boat careened around the bend and docked briefly at the boathouse beyond the bridge. Two minutes later and the pilot was heading back toward Diablo, returning our wave as he zoomed away. We sat for a few more minutes, watching Riprap Creek cascading into the water on the far side, then pulled on packs and headed back uphill.

Without our noticing, the snow had stopped. Robins flew between the trees, and songbirds belted out arias from the treetops. Mosses and lichens glowed green around us. The sun struggled in vain to pierce the smothering clouds. We took our time, picked up unusually colored and patterned rocks on the trail, recrossed creeks, admired big trees. 

About six hours after we’d left, we returned to the ELC and pulled off our muddy boots and socks. Digging into the lunches we’d stashed in the room, a sort of large appetizer to dinner in a couple of hours, we spent the next 45 minutes talking about everything we’d seen.

At home in the mountains

I’d tested a new pair of boots on the hike and my feet were a bit sore, otherwise I probably would have gone out again. In the North Cascades, I want to be outside all the time, soaking in the peaks and the changing light and the cold, clean air and the sharp scents of the forest. It started snowing again, and I decided warm socks and a book were a wiser choice. Concentration eluded me, though. I kept gazing out the window, thinking about this place.

When I was looking for a case study for my doctoral dissertation nearly 25 years ago, my advisor suggested the North Cascades. I didn’t know the area, and like most people, even people who’ve lived in Washington for decades, I didn’t know about the national park. What I found during my research captivated me. I decided to write a book about the history of the park, and I was two years into the research when I realized I really needed to see some of the landscape I was writing about. In fall 2003 I hiked to Cascade Pass, one of the first hikes I ever did solo and one so burned into my memory that when I returned in 2016 I noticed immediately what had changed there.

Years later, the book was almost done, and I applied for a creative residency at the North Cascades Institute. Over three weeks, I hiked and backpacked to places important in the park story, gaining valuable perspective and some serious cardio endurance. At the time, I sensed those weeks were important. I gained confidence in my hiking ability and in my understanding of the story. I felt strong and adventurous. I missed my family, but I didn’t want to leave the North Cascades when my residency ended. This place had become home.

Five years on, I think I was my authentic self during those three weeks. The mountains imprinted on me, filled my spirit, and held on to a piece of my heart. Part of me will always live in the North Cascades, and I reconnect with that part by returning to this place.

Bluebird skies

The next morning, the snow had retreated to the upper slopes of the mountains. The sun shone dazzlingly overhead, and we headed up the highway to the closure at Ross Dam trailhead. At the Diablo Lake overlook, I realized I’d now been in the North Cascades in every season. While yesterday’s hike may have been in winter, today was most assuredly spring. The mountaintops gleamed white, the trees frosted above the snowlike and green-black below. Diablo Lake, famously turquoise in summer when glacial flour hangs suspended in the water, simply reflected the blue sky. Colonial Peak, Pyramid Peak, Davis Peak, and Sourdough Mountain surrounded us. I looked and looked, trying to stamp the image on my brain. We had a long drive back, and state parks to visit, and so reluctantly tore ourselves away.

Down the highway, past the Gorge Creek waterfall, past Newhalem and the tombs of Seattle City Light founder J.D. Ross and his wife, past the visitor center, past the mountains-in-miniature park entrance sculpture. Driving through Marblemount, I chanced a quick look over my shoulder down the valley toward the peaks, then continued westward along the Skagit and, eventually, another home.

Postscript

The North Cascades inspire far better writers than I. To learn more about Beat poets in the mountains, I recommend John Suiter’s Poets on the Peak, a gorgeous book in every sense. Impressions of the North Cascades, edited by the great historian John Miles, is a wide-ranging essay collection that will take you, at least virtually, to the mountains and its inhabitants. More recently, North Cascades: Finding Beauty and Renewal in the Wild Nearby, edited by William Dietrich, adds to the voices bringing the mountains alive on the page. Iris Graville’s memoir about moving to remote Stehekin, Hiking Naked, and Ana Maria Spagna’s memoir about living there, Uplake, show how geographic isolation can bring us closer together. I’d love to hear your thoughts and stories about your North Cascades.

If you’re looking for your own North Cascades experience, you can’t do better than a stay at the North Cascades Institute’s Environmental Learning Center. NCI is a national leader in environmental and outdoor education, and its wonderful staff help make any stay memorable. NCI offers far more than Base Camp, and I encourage you to learn about this extraordinary organization that is transforming how we connect with nature and consider supporting their innovative, vital work. 

Sense of place is the sixth sense, an internal compass and map made by memory and spatial perception together.

Rebecca Solnit, Savage Dreams