Happy trails, favorite hikes: North Cascades NP turning 40

A road runs through it — and Rick McGuire is grateful that the framers of North Cascades National Park, a "complex" of parkland and recreation areas that marks its 40th anniversary on Oct. 2, were obligated to stop at a single highway, scenic State Route 20.

"The Forest Service would have put roads up almost every valley if it wasn't for people like Harvey Manning," says McGuire, a board member of the North Cascades Conservation Council (NCCC), a group pivotal to the park's creation (with Manning, the influential hiking-guide author, among its ranks in the early 1960s). "That absolutely was the plan."

In 1968, when the North Cascades National Park Complex (encompassing Ross Lake and Lake Chelan recreation areas) was signed into law, a decades-long battle, basically pitting timber vs. timelessness, was finally quelled.

So was talk of building loads of roads: over Cascade Pass, up the east shore of Ross Lake to the Canadian border, around Mount Baker, even a tramway to the summit of 7,408-foot Ruby Mountain southeast of Diablo Lake.

"There are still people out there pushing the tram," McGuire says.

McGuire views the park's creation as vital yet imperfect, sharing the late Manning's contention that the park was shaped with "boundaries drawn by a lunatic."

Reasons: The glorious view at Artist Point at the end of Highway 542? Not within the park. Two gorgeous, popular lakes both named Lake Ann? Both outside park boundaries. Rainy, Washington and Cutthroat passes, including some of the most iconic views along Route 20, the North Cascades Highway? No, no and ditto. Much of the NCCC's ongoing work, McGuire says, seeks to correct such flaws.

So how can a person celebrate the 40 years of protection for what does lie within the park's boundaries? Step outside and see for yourself the scenery that prompted Manning to devote much of his life to preserving such landscapes in an undeveloped form.

To assist, we asked guidebook authors, climbers and park officials to identify some of their favorite jaunts within the park. Their toughest challenge: choosing just one.

Favorite walks in the park

Sourdough Mountain: 11 miles out and back, 5,085-foot elevation gain. Starts west of Diablo Lake.

Craig Romano (author of "Day Hiking: North Cascades," The Mountaineers Books), a native of New Hampshire, had passed through the Northwest on a couple of cross-country bike rides, but in July of 1985 he came to take a closer, slower, deeper look.

Using an old Sierra Club tote book, Romano, then 24, chose Sourdough Mountain as his second lifetime Cascade hike because, as the guidebook predicted, the brutal 5,000-foot elevation gain "meant you were pretty much guaranteed to be by yourself."

Yet atop its 6,120-foot summit, he found he had company. "I heard, 'You made it,' " Romano says. "I turned and saw this can of beer being tossed to me. It was from the ranger staffing the lookout there. He seemed happy to have company." And the beer? "It tasted good," he says.

The hike is a grunt going up, a knee-buster on the descent. Yet that vintage memory, that sense of discovery, keeps this trip special to Romano.

"I grew up hiking in Appalachians, older mountains," he says. "Now I'm looking at very young mountains — rocks and ice and lots of raw peaks, a sea of ruggedness. And it was all softened by all the wildflowers that were out. I was amazed."

Maple Pass/Lake Ann: 7-mile loop, 2,000-foot gain. Near Rainy Pass.

Mike McQuaide, of Bellingham (author of "Day Hike! North Cascades," Sasquatch Books), figures this is one of the premier modest-challenge/high-reward hikes in the entire park, although only the pass itself (at 6,850 feet) is within the park boundary.

"It gets better and better with each step," says McQuaide, a Seattle Times contributor. "You've got cascading waterfalls, far-off and nearby peaks, and Lake Ann itself glistening below the pass. And it's a loop — so no doubling back, no reruns. It's all new the whole way."

Boston Basin: 8 miles out and back, 3,000-foot gain. Near the end of Cascade River Road.

This steep walk into a vertical climbers' amphitheater is what the husband-wife writing team of Kathy and Craig Copeland ("WOW: North Cascades," Wilderness Press) calls "as Cascadian as it gets."

Which means? "Spiky summits, colossal glaciers, psychedelic meadows, cathedral forests," Craig Copeland says. "And here, water is cascading all around you. It's the American Alps."

Park Creek Pass: Multiday trips of varying lengths. Start and end points vary.

Three authors — Mike Woodmansee ("Trekking Washington," The Mountaineers), Doug Lorain ("Backpacking Washington," Wilderness Press) and Peter Potterfield ("Classic Hikes of the World," W.W. Norton) — all direct readers over this 6,059-foot gap for closeup views of the dramatic spires, cliffs and ice on 9,112-foot Buckner Mountain.

Each takes a different approach. The 45-mile route Woodmansee proposes compensates for a lengthy car shuttle by leading hikers over two other dramatic passes, Easy and Cascade. Lorain's meandering near-loop of 65 miles enters and exits via Highway 20 (10 miles between trailheads). Potterfield's trip ends sweetly, with a boat ride out of Stehekin.

Woodmansee, a former marathoner, once did his 45-mile route in a single day. With five or six days, though, you could take all his recommended side trips (such as waterfall-filled Horseshoe Basin) and cover 60 eye-bugging miles. "Do any of it, all of it," he says. "It is the preeminent hike in the park."

Bridge Creek backcountry campsite: Start and end points vary.

North Cascades National Park superintendent Chip Jarvis likes the family-friendly vibe of this not-too-remote destination.

The camp is about five miles north of High Bridge (the northern terminus of the shuttle-bus route that begins at Stehekin, the end point of the Lake Chelan boat ferry). Kids dig the shuttle.

The five-mile hike is relatively flat and thus well-suited for families introducing kids to backcountry travel.

The site serves as a hub for other hikes (say, Goode Ridge trail), even fishing.

Cascade Pass: 8 miles out and back (11 to Sahale Arm); 1,800- to 3,000-foot gain.

Vicky Spring, daughter of the late photographer Ira Spring, who co-created guidebooks with Harvey Manning, figures her dad would choose this seminal route, the starting point for the famed Ptarmigan Traverse.

"The old trail, not the new one," she points out. "He loved the quick two-mile ascent to the pass through the meadow. Scenery the entire distance.

"He always loved the place, even as the rules and trail changed to protect the sensitive areas," she says. "I hiked with him up there several times, but he would always grumble about the trail after it got relocated."

Big Beaver Valley: Approximately 27 miles; start and end points vary.

So what would Manning, who died in 2006 after putting so much energy into attaining the park's conservation, choose as his favorite?

"He liked any place that's wild," says McGuire, 51, who served with Manning at the NCCC since the '80s.

"If I could channel Harvey, I would hazard a guess that it would be Big Beaver Valley," McGuire says. "Even in the 1980s, Seattle City Light wanted to dam and flood that valley since it was not far from Ross Dam. That would have wiped out a magnificent stand of cedars that are maybe 1,000 years old. He worked relentlessly to save that area."

Manning's wife, Betty, agrees that "the Big Beaver" was dear to Harvey's heart, as was the route over Hannegan Pass to Copper Ridge in the park's far northwest corner. "He loved those places," she says.

While hiking the terrain is rewarding, McGuire says the work that Manning and fellow conservationists accomplished is best appreciated from an airplane.

"Compare the look of the British Columbia portion of the Cascades versus the U.S. portion," he says. "North of the border, the landscape can only be described as moth-eaten. Roads and logging have gone almost everywhere.

"Once you cross south of the 49th parallel, though, the landscape below looks virtually untouched, with valley after pristine valley without so much as a scratch from logging," he says. "It's really quite amazing, and an undeniable testament to what was accomplished in 1968."

Freelance writer Terry Wood is the Expert Advice editor for REI.com. Contact him at farhiker@rei.com.