After our night sleeping with the bees, we drove to the North Cascades Mountain Hostel in Winthrop, WA. We were treated with long showers and a full kitchen after three sweaty days backpacking in Mt. Rainier. The hostel appears to serve PTC thru hikers based on the amount of resupply packages waiting.
Winthrop, Washington is a charming old Western town in the rain shadow of the North Cascade range, so it is very hot and dry. While we were there it reached 107°F, a good enough excuse to have a rest day. After walking around the town in the morning, Molly and I spent the day tweaking our future travel plans, working on a jigsaw puzzle at the hostel, and cooking dinner.
For the majority of our trip we have been fortunate to avoid wildfires, but with the hot weather that was bound to change. The night before leaving, the hostel owner let us know that the North Cascades Scenic hwy 20 was closed due to a fire, turning our 2.5 hour drive to our campsite on Baker Lake into 5.5 hours. On that drive, a van kicked up a rock and cracked our windshield.
In North Cascade National Park the accessible day hiking options were very limited due to active fires or previous fire damage. Some of the most beautiful trails require backpacking so we will have to come back and visit again when we have more time in the area. We found a nice morning hike called Devil’s Knob and in the afternoon we hiked Park Butte to a fire lookout tower at the base of Mt. Baker.
Fortunately, we had good cell reception on the Park Butte lookout tower allowing me to receive an email that Jasper National Park and the town of Jasper was under a wildfire evacuation order, canceling four nights of accommodations. While enjoying our view of Mt. Baker we quickly scrambled to find an open campsite and luckily found an opening for three nights in Kootenay National Park. After seeing the speed of the fire and devastation in Jasper, we realized how fortunate it was that we did not visit Jasper a week earlier. We plan to make a trip to Jasper in the future when the town recovers.
Before heading to our hotel in Bellingham WA, we hiked eight miles of the Ptarmigan Ridge trail. The trail was beautiful with amazing views of Mt Shuksan, and probably Mt Baker, if it wasn’t hiding in the clouds.
Not Sew Fancy Travels 