North Cascades NP: America’s ‘Alps’… National Park Series 1

/ Curt Mekemson
It’s no surprise that the North Cascades National Park is often referred to as America’s Alps. The Park is noted for its mountains, glaciers, turquoise lakes and rugged beauty. Located in northwestern Washington on Canada’s border, it comes with 93 named mountains and over 300 glaciers. It has the most extensive glacial system in the US outside of Alaska.
One would think that the park’s beauty and relatively close proximity to Seattle, would make it one of America’s most popular parks. Not so. It had just over 40,000 visitors last year. In comparison, Olympic National Park, which we visited just prior to North Cascades had 2.94 million, and Glacier National Park, where we just were, had 2.93 million. It’s not the least visited, however. That honor goes to the Gates of the Arctic NP in a remote section of Alaska that had 11,000 visitors in 2023. That park has neither roads or trails. I once took a group backpacking there. It was the ultimate wilderness adventure. BTW, the most popular national park in the US is Great Smokey Mountains NP with 13.3 million annual visitors.
We drove into the park from our campground in the small town of Twisp on the east side. The views were spectacular. The RV on the highway provides an interesting perspective.
The mountains seem to spring into the air. Mountain climbing is a favorite sport in North Cascades, as you might imagine from this photo. I admire people who can scale peaks like these, but no thanks. It has never been a bucket list item of mine, nor Peggy’s.
The park’s altitude ranges from 605 feet to 9,206 feet.
Another spectacular view from Highway 20 traveling from east to west. Both grey wolves and grizzlies wander through the park along with cougars and black bears.
There are numerous waterfalls in the park. We found this small but colorful one along the highway. It was cascading waterfalls that led Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to name the mountain range the Cascades on their journey to the Northwest 1806. The range runs from Mt. Lassen in California to the North Cascades. While the mountain range has a complicated geological history, it is best known for its imposing volcanoes.
The goal for our trip into North Cascades National Park was to go kayaking on Diablo Lake, shown here. Which we did. But that’s the subject for our next blog. We will finish today’s post with photos we took returning to our campground in Twisp on the eastern side of the park.
The most significant difference between the west side and east side of Cascades National Park is the amount of rainfall. The west is drenched by storms rolling in from the Pacific and receives an average of 110 inches per year. By the time the clouds reach the east, they have been drained of much of their moisture. The east only receives an average of 35 inches. This is known as a rain shadow effect. Both the mountains and the forest above reflect this.
A close up.
The trees next to the mountain here are impacted by drought. We saw a lot of this in Oregon when we lived there. Peggy and I had 50 dead trees removed from our property for fire protection.
Peggy spotted an ogre in the outcrop above. It took me a while. Grin.
It was the huge cave here that caught her attention.
We took a close up. That’s it for today. Next, we meet some devilish birds while kayaking on Diablo Lake in the heart of the park.

22 thoughts on “North Cascades NP: America’s ‘Alps’… National Park Series 1”

  1. It was beautiful in August 2021 despite the blistering heat and the fact that the road to your campground – and everything east – was closed by forest fires. We enjoyed the west side, and your pictures show how much we have yet to see.

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    • “We enjoyed the west side, and your pictures show how much we have yet to see.” Always a good thing, Ray— to have places one wants to visit, or revisit. I went back and checked my journal for summer 2021. Our home in Oregon was clogged with smoke from fires in Northern California.

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    • Always, our pleasure. We find it hard to understand why more people don’t visit. Not that we were complaining when we were there. Finding national parks that aren’t packed/over-loved in the summer is a challenge.

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    • First, Zan, thanks. As for going to Sequoia National Park, sadly no. We would have loved to include Sequoia and Yosemite into our trip. They are two of our favorite areas. Unfortunately, the amount of time we had was limited and our focus was going up the Pacific Coast. The good news was that North Cascades and Glacier were on our way back to Virginia. –Curt

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      • I read an interesting ongoing study about the effects of drought on trees in New Hampshire. They are finding that heavily stressed trees in drought will enter winter dormancy earlier. Established trees can survive without photosynthesizing for up to a year. Prolonged drought can create a cycle of longer dormancy periods and shorter growing periods which some types of trees handle better than other types. The 1930’s Dust Bowl Drought is still the longest and harshest drought episode.

        A study of Mountain Pine Beetle in British Columbia and Alberta found a correlation between outbreaks of beetles and drought, but also found that lack of forest fires created stands of trees that were ‘too old’. The more mature trees were less resistant to beetle attack because the tissues of older trees promote beetle development more easily.

        The spruce and poplar on our property are now about forty years old. They were too closely planted (before our time) and they have started ‘self thinning’. The aspen and willow were natural and have already been through several cycles of natural die back and regeneration.

        We let nature do its thing – our job is to remove the dead wood to reduce the damage that fire could do!

      • My first acquaintance was just outside of Bakersfield in Southern California, maybe 15 years ago. Literally thousands of trees, a whole forest, had been killed by a combination of drought and pine beetles. When I had ridden my bicycle through there in 1989 on my 10,000 mile journey around North America, it had been a beautiful, healthy, forest. Sad.

  8. I saw North Cascades back in 1977, but it was mostly a drive through. I thought it was spectacular and deserved more time. Guess I must have missed some trailheads. Your pictures confirm that it’s worth another look.

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  9. The conversation about the pine beetle was interesting. I’ve read several articles about the recent fires in Alberta, especially Jasper, that pointed out residents had been concerned about the beetles’ effect, and the number of dead trees left standing, since 2018 at least.

    That aside, it certainly is beautiful territory. I remember hearing about that ‘rain shadow’ in Colorado, where western and eastern parts of the states vary, sometimes significantly, in terms of total rainfall. It’s always interesting to see how different ‘old’ and ‘new’ mountains can appear.

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    • You could hear them buzzing/chewing away in our trees, Linda. Nasty.
      The Sierra Nevadas are another example of rain shadow, as well as young mountains. They were raised some 5 million years ago, the Rocky Mountains 75 million, and the Appalachian a staggering 1.2 billion.

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