Skip to main content

Cascade Pass/Sahale Arm Trail....Beautiful North Cascades National Park

While our home town mountain...Billygoat as we call it...proper name....Goat Mountain was burning up this fall...we decided that to get away from all the smoke we would have to venture out a little ways...Cascade Pass/Sahale Arm trail has been on my list of trails that I wanted to explore and with some careful planning we managed to make it.....4 hours is a long drive...up at 4 AM and out the door...no stops for a morning iced coffee, not much open in the area that early....so it was a tough drive without caffeine in the system....I am always just a tad bit nervous trying to locate trails and spend entirely too much time mapping them so I wont get lost.... this one was pretty easy to find...long drive on a dirt road, that sometimes can be just a little rough but nothing a passenger car can't handle....When we dropped down onto the Rainy Pass side of the mountains we had left the smoke that was creeping up the pass and entered fog.....which we traveled through all the way to the trail head...With a little bit of encouragement at the trail head from two other hikers we headed out in hopes of clear sky's after we reached the pass...It's a nice hike...fairly easy to the top...we didn't get any views but the color was brilliant with the low wet fog.....at the pass the wind was screaming and the fog was rolling over the top...at this point we still had zero views and were considering turning back...but the wind was blowing hard enough it started to blow some of the fog clear out of the pass.....and we had a glimpse or two or the mountains and decided we had come to far to turn back...on up the steep...rocky slope we hiked...picked our way through the rocks...stopped to watch for pika's and on up.....what a view when we popped over the top.....picked ourselves a rock and ate some lunch with a view of Doubtful Lake below and back down the mountain we headed....we didn't continue all the way to the arm this trip...the smoke was pouring in the backside of the mountains and decided we would be returning some day with hopefully clear sky's ..beautiful trail...can't wait to see all the views on a return trip that we missed this time....will make it seem like a brand new trail.





















Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

North Cascades Hwy 20, Snowshoeing

Since we don't take snowshoeing very serious and it's just another way to get out in the great outdoors and have some fun, we snowshoe highway 20 from the parking area up the pass quiet often.  It is a busy snowmobile area, but if you just be aware of whats going on around you, it is safe.  There is so much room to have fun, snow covered slopes, snowshoe up the road, or venture off the road.  It is a gradual climb up the road, we never get very far before we run out of gas and are ready to head back down.  I would love to some day take a snowmobile to the top of the pass...and snowshoe....I keep dreaming.  This is a easy location to just get out, stretch your legs and enjoy the fresh winter air.  I have always been a little bit apprehensive about  snowshoeing where there is snowmobile activities, but so far we have met only super polite folks and very respectful to keep their distance of folks snowshoeing.
Post a Comment
Read more

Yellow Jacket Sno-Park.......................

December 29th, 2012 came along with some beautiful weather in the Mazama area....broken blue skys and a nice 21 degrees.....with my little brother and his wife up visiting through the holiday season we ventured out to play in the snow.....We originally headed up to snowshoe the Cedar Creek trail....but Hwy 20 wasn't plowed past the first sign at the bottom.....and when we came across the Early Winters bridge we could see trucks and cars parked on both sides of the road....somewhere between 25-40 rigs.....lots of snowmobile trailers.....we decided that we needed to locate another snowshoeing spot with a little less traffic since my brother wanted to do a little snowboarding if possible......so we headed to Yellow Jacket Sno-Park....Large parking area with just a few vehicles parked....we strapped on our gear and headed up the trail....nice easy hike up a groomed snowmobile track....lots of places to step off the trail and explore...we pretty much stuck to the trail on the way up.....
Post a Comment
Read more

The Places We Can Go

Life goes on, things change, storms of life come and go.  One thing that always remains the same is the feeling and quiet peace I feel from being in the mountains.  This was a spur of the moment overnight trip.  It was so needed and such a beautiful time.  Left the house around 2:30 PM, traffic was so slow heading up Hwy 20, lots of folks heading out of Mazama.  Arrived at the trail head a few minutes before 4 PM, and we were off down the trail in a few minutes.  Three quarters of a mile down the trail a bee or some kind of flying ant decided to bite my nieces eye lid, talk about hysteria for a moment.   I was pretty sure our trip was over, but we were able to move on with a very cold creek soaked multipurpose face mask.  The sun was sinking fast and the wind was howling by the time we reached the top.  Made some quick decisions on the best place to park the tents, and we set up camp.  It was truly an incredible evening, hiked aroun...
Post a Comment
Read more