North Cascades
National Park
Established in 1968, North Cascades National Park is contiguous with Lake Ross National Recreation Area and Lake Chelan National Recreation Area. The three together comprise the North Cascades National Park Complex. North Cascades has the second fewest annual visitors of all National Parks outside of Alaska. Glaciers and waterways carve through mountains, lakes, and valleys.
North Cascades is the youngest Park that the tour will visit in year one. The four-day stay will begin with a ferry trip up Lake Chelan and a two-night stay at Lake Cascade Lodge in Stehekin. The remainder of the trip will be in the Northern unit of the Park, highlighted by a hike on the Cascade Pass Trail.
Read our blog on North Cascades
Itinerary
We are presenting our itinerary as we lived it. Not the plan, but rather what we were actually able to accomplish. Naturally there are some missed goals and some serendipitous surprises. We always rolled with the punches and made the best out of our time in the national parks. Below we have included some notes that explain how the itinerary changed from what we had in mind.
It’s important to know that these plans were made to suit the abilities and interests of two young girls aged 9 and 11. We feel confident that any family on their “Every Kid Outdoors Summer” (4th grade) could handle this itinerary. For hikes, we have listed the distance, elevation gain, and time that we tracked, which may differ from published (or actual) measurements.
Day 1
Morning
Lady of the Lake Ferry “uplake” from Fields Point
Arrive at Stehekin
Afternoon
Bike Rental
Stehekin Pastry Company
Evening
Overnight at North Cascades Lodge
Day 2
Morning
Bike Ride
Stehekin Pastry Company
Afternoon
Old Stehekin School House
Rainbow Falls
Buckner Orchard
The Garden at Stehekin
Evening
Overnight at North Cascades Lodge
Day 3
Morning
Bike ride to Harlequin Bridge
Kayak Rental
Afternoon
Lady of the Lake Ferry “downlake” from Stehekin
Arrive at Fields Point Landing
Washington Pass
Diablo Lake Overlook
Evening
Overnight at Newhalem Creek Campground
Day 4
Morning
North Cascades Visitor Center
Wilderness Information Center at Marblemount
Drive Cascade River Rd. into North Cascades National Park
Afternoon
Hike: Thunder Knob (4.2 miles, 700 feet, 2.5 hours)
Diablo Lake shore
Evening
Overnight at Newhalem Creek Campground
Notes
It’s hard to say that we made changes to our itinerary in Stehekin, given that our original plan was just to “be” in Stehekin. One important shift occurred between our 2020 plan (which was postponed by the pandemic) and our 2021 plan. We added an extra day and night in Stehekin, and that was a crucial addition. We would strongly recommend that anyone who visits Stehekin stay for at least two nights, more if possible. (A month would not be too long.)
So, as planned, we played Stehekin by ear and remained flexible with our daily plans. We decided to rent bikes for the duration of our stay with gave us quite a bit of freedom to cruise up and down the paved road to various sites. We also tacked on a boat rental on the final day to paddle across the lake and find the petroglyphs — also very much worthwhile.
After the boat return to Chelan, we were lucky to be able to drive to Newhalem on State Road 20. This was the original plan, but based on Rangers’ warning that the road was closed due to wildfire operations, we were prepared to drive the long way around through the suburbs of Seattle. Not only would we have spent a couple more hours driving, we also would have missed Rainy Pass and Washington Pass. Turns out the State Road 20 re-opened the day we needed it.
However, Mother Nature continued to wreak havoc on our North Cascades plans. We really only had one full day in the north section of the park complex. The plan was to drive Cascade River Road and hike Cascade Pass, allowing us to enter into North Cascades National Park for the first time. (See our blog for more discussion on NCNP proper versus the NRAs.) However a washed out bridge caused the road to be closed. Our second choice hike, Hidden Lake Trail, was closed due to fire operations. In the end, we still drove Cascade River Road to the end in order to spend some time in the National Park, and we settled on the Thunder Knob Trail as our hike for the day.
Also, for what it’s worth, the North Cascades Visitor Center in Newhalem was closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays — the two days we were there — so we had to figure out how to modify our plans on our own. But, we did fine, and we very much enjoyed the North Cascades National Park Complex.
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