I took a chance and used my last week off this year to do some hiking and backpacking in the Cascades – just in time for larch season! For those who don’t know, the alpine larch – larix lyallii – is a species of deciduous, coniferous tree found on the eastern slopes of the Washington Cascades. Their needles typically turn golden yellow in late fall (late September and early October in the mountains) before dropping for the winter.

This year, I decided to apply for advance permits in the North Cascades. Usually, advance reservations aren’t necessary if you have flexibility in your schedule (and especially if you have weekday availability), but I decided why not? The plan was to do Copper Ridge and then check out Tapto Lakes; I ended up scoring permits for Silesia Camp, Graybeal Camp, and Tapto XC zone in that order. My friend Holly joined in and we were psyched for a trip to a place that had been on both of our bucket lists for a while now.

In mid-August, I headed back to the Cascades for a solid outing with my friend Tobin. We got a leisurely start from the Seattle area around 9 AM and from what I remember – my memory is a bit hazy at this point – were on the trail by noon. I won’t write too much about the approach up to Gunn Peak except to say that it was straightforward but strenuous. Lots of gain in a fairly short distance.

Our original plan was head to the Chilliwacks in the North Cascades – I had even been extra careful to remember my passport for the border crossing – but a poor weather forecast caused us to reconsider at the last minute. I threw out the idea of a leisurely three-day attempt at Buck Mountain and Tobin assented. And even though this trip felt like a consolation prize at first, it actually ended up being my favorite hike of the year and even one of the best hikes I’ve done in the Cascades.

This was a fun solo trip on the tail end of my trip to Washington this year. I had wanted to camp high up near a summit to catch sunrise and sunset but also didn’t want to commit to some of the more remote locations in the North Cascades. I settled on Chikamin Peak on the recommendation of several friends who mentioned that they did the Mineral Creek approach and it was easy.

This was one of the first backpacking trips I did in 2019, which really seems like easier times now. I had just passed my qualifying exams and took two weeks off to hike in the Cascades. I convinced my friend Bryce to go on a three-day out-and-back trip from Phelps Creek to Lyman Lakes and then Image Lake. She also brought along her dog Arlo (a border collie mix) and we all had a great time checking out this beautiful part of the Glacier Peak Wilderness.

Over Labor Day weekend, I took a gamble and booked a flight back out to Seattle for some prime time in the North Cascades. The past few weeks had been hot and smokey, but I had three blissfully clear – if cold – nights in the mountains with my friend Holly when I thought my summer was already over. The plan was to scramble up Fisher Peak and potentially Mount Arriva as well. With three days, it would be a fairly leisurely trip. Or so we thought.

The summer is approaching its end for me and the work is beginning to pile up. I had originally planned to get out to the North Cascades to climb Black Peak last week, but plans changed, my hiking partner had to cancel, and I had relegated the trip to next summer's list. Fortunately, Lucas mentioned that he and a friend would be attempting a car-to-car (i.e. day hike) of Black Peak on Sunday and had invited me to join.

I’ve got a bit of a rocky relationship with this mountain. In 2015, I tried to climb it with no prior scrambling experience (I did have a helmet, though!) which ended in failure. I remember looking up the north face of the peak and thinking I surely wasn’t meant to climb up that steep rock. Fast forward to 2017 and I successfully made the summit, albeit without any photos because a child almost stole my DSLR (more on this later). In 2018, I decided to go back up for sunset with my friend Lucas.

Earlier this summer, I took one of those no good, very bad trips into the backcountry. The kind where it seems like everything that could possibly go wrong does. Where you forget to pack multiple essential items and all of the factors out of your control decide not to cooperate at the same time.

My friend Holly and I decided on a leisurely three-day trip to La Bohn Lakes with a trip up Mt. Hinman which I had failed to successfully summit the year before.

I made a last minute decision to head up Dip Top Peak in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. I had been up to the peak last summer as a day trip, but knew I wanted to summit again with sunset and sunrise lighting, so it was an easy choice.

After an internship in the bay area, I ended up spending four days in the Ansel Adams Wilderness with my friend Nicole. We got walk-up permits to camp at Ediza and Iceberg Lakes, and I wanted to checked out Volcanic Ridge too. Props to the rangers in Mammoth Lakes for helping us organize our itinerary and making all of the different permit zones make sense to us.

I recently trawled through several old hard drives and an old laptop to find the RAW files of the photos I took over Labor Day weekend in 2017. This trip was rather special to me since it was my first and only trip to the Picket Range in the North Cascades.

This was my second scramble in Washington on the heels of Kaleetan. The entire scramble from the lake below Vesper Peak was snow-covered so it was fairly easy going. At just 6214 ft, Vesper Peak offers some of the most rugged views of the Cascades in the area considering its relatively low elevation. It sits between Mountain Loop Highway and Highway 2, and you can definitely tell from the terrain that you’re beginning to transition away from the Central Cascades and into the North Cascades.

I’m currently writing up trip reports for several older trips from before I made this website. Kaleetan Peak will always always hold a special place in my heart because it was my first scramble…ever. The route features a steep climber’s trail in the forest, open traversing over talus fields, and an easy, solid class 3 scramble up to the summit. It’s very doable as a day hike but I decided to do it over two days so I could enjoy evening light on the mountain.

This was my first backpacking trip in the North Cascades National Park and only my second hike in the area (the first being a trip to Hidden Lake Lookout in 2015). I remember seeing a photo of the campsites at the toe of the Sahale Glacier with organized rock piles built to block out the wind and thinking to myself that I had to go there, too. As much as people like to knock on social media, it was a great way for me to learn about the popular trailed hikes when I was first starting out.