AdventuresNW
1. The Elephant in the Park
North Cascades National Park contains some of the most spectacular mountain scenery in the United States, but due to its rugged topography, accessing the alpine zone is physically demanding. Most trails begin at low elevations in old-growth forests, and hikers must work to get to the tree line for truly jaw-dropping vistas. Beyond the trails lies the most rugged terrain in the lower 48 states. Extending your adventure beyond the maintained trail system is not for the meek.
The “Elephant in the Park” (Elephant Butte) takes this thought to the extreme. The summit is definitely not one of the classic peaks, such as Forbidden, Challenger, Torment, or Terror, sought out by climbers. Elephant Butte requires no technical climbing skills because it is more of a lump on a ridge than a dramatic rock spire. At 7,340 feet, Elephant Butte is not even one of the highest 200 peaks in the range. So why my fascination with it? Location, location, location! Elephant Butte is positioned close to the center of the most spectacular sector of the park, the Pickets.
By the time we reached the campsite, I was completely exhausted. To the west, Elephant Butte seemed very far away.
This isolated subrange of the park contains the most jagged collection of rock spires in the most remote location. The Pickets hold a mystical allure to mountaineers due to their beauty, history, and remoteness. Like a moth drawn to a flame, climbers approach this area with a humble understanding of the risk involved in reaching one of the summits. When hikers see the Pickets from a distance, they appear as serrated teeth against the horizon.
Elephant Butte provides the rare opportunity to experience the wildness of the Pickets without the technical gear or skills of an alpinist and the usual heinous approach through steep slopes covered with slide alder and Devil’s Club infested with black flies, mosquitoes, and ground hornets. So why the “Elephant in the Park” metaphor? Reaching the summit of this 7,340-foot peak requires nearly 10,000 feet of elevation gain and loss over roughly 20 miles of travel!
On Labor Day weekend, 1998, Karen Neubauer and I started up the Sourdough Mountain trail at Diablo, a small town 900 feet above sea level. Tired of hoisting packs full of ropes, helmets, crampons, and ice axes, we selected Elephant Butte as our objective. Countless steep switchbacks led up through the canopy of conifers and understory vine maples. 4,000 feet up we left the trail and headed up to the crest of Stetattle Ridge, where we gazed out over deeply shadowed valleys to a sea of peaks stretching in all directions. At 6,500 feet, we set up the tent near a late-season tarn beneath a rising full moon.
Up before that moon set over Mt. Fury, we continued out the ridge with its many ups and downs until we reached its high point at 6,800 feet. To the west, Elephant Butte seemed tantalizingly close until we saw the BIG drop between our perch and the peak. We descended 1,500 feet only to regain that—plus another 1000 feet—to finally reach the rounded summit where we were rewarded by 360-degree views into the heart of the range. To the east, we could see the long ridge we had traveled leading back toward Ross Lake. To the south was the Colonial/Snowfield group leading through a maze of peaks towards Cascade Pass. To the north, the less visited Redoubt/Spickard group rose into the sky near the Canadian border, while to the west, oh so close, were the jagged Pickets highlighted by the dramatic glacier-clad northern walls of the Southern Pickets. The view was one of the best we had enjoyed on our many excursions in the region.
We gobbled a quick lunch before turning back, which meant that we had to drop 2500 feet before gaining 1500 feet to Stetattle Ridge. After 10 hours of arduous travel, we arrived at camp just as the full moon rose. The following day, we descended almost 6,000 feet back to the car. Just another “normal” outing in the Cascades! Nearly 10,000 feet up and down, for a 7400-foot summit: “The Elephant in the Park”.
2. The Elephant, or Monster, in the Closet
As a child, I instinctively checked to make sure the bedroom closet doors were shut before turning out the lights, thereby guaranteeing that the monster that may be lurking inside would not enter the bedroom while I slept. What that monster looked like was uncertain, but it wasn’t pretty. Six decades later, I would glimpse that monster.
For years, I ruminated about that ’98 Elephant Butte climb, haunted by the vivid memories of that spectacular panorama of wild peaks. A return trip beckoned, and like an addict, I had to have another fix. Karen knew better. I coerced my friend Dave to join me for a July trip in 2022, 24 years after first reaching Elephant Butte’s summit. The approach trail towards Sourdough Mountain seemed steeper than I had remembered. Dave simply powered ahead as he always does. By the time we reached the campsite, I was completely exhausted. To the west, Elephant Butte seemed very far away.
The next day started with weary legs and the undulating Stetattle Ridge seemed unending. We reached the high point before the BIG drop. This time it seemed like a chasm and not a drop. Fatigue crushed my will to go forward. Kindly, Dave accepted the decision to turn back, and we savored the view, which is still superb but not the penultimate summit vista I had promised him. The ‘monster’ in my closet—aging—had finally appeared. Somehow, I knew this trip would be a delineation in my life that could not be denied. In youth, we ignore the aging process and see it in others as something separate from ourselves. Elephant Butte nudged me past that blind spot. That monster had exited the closet, never again to be corralled back in.
3. The Elephant in the Room
It had been a wetter-than-normal winter in the Pacific Northwest, resulting in a heavy snowpack. But then, an unusually late spring heat spell caused much of the snowpack to melt. A delightfully warm, dry summer settled over Western Washington.
On July 29, 2023, a thunderstorm blew into the North Cascades, bringing a fury of lightning strikes to the dry forest above Diablo Lake. This unique geographical area, east of Newhalem, has a slightly drier climate zone due to a rain shadow effect caused by the western peaks of the Cascades. The Sourdough Mountain Fire had been ignited.
On August 4, the combination of heat, high winds, and tinder-dry forest resulted in a rapid acceleration of the fire, giving birth to a massive plume of smoke rising thousands of feet into the sky. This cloud, resembling a violent cumulonimbus thunderhead, could be seen throughout the Puget Sound Region. Over 400 firefighters struggled to contain the flames, fighting desperately to keep the fire from crossing Highway 20, burning the town of Diablo, incinerating the North Cascades Institute, and reaching the powerlines and facilities of Puget Sound Energy. The North Cascades Highway was closed, as were all trails and campgrounds in the Ross Lake Recreation Area and the immediate North Cascades National Park area. The North Cascades Institute canceled its summer and fall educational programs, some of which ironically were to have been focused on the local effects of climate change.
In recent years media coverage of the effects of climate change has centered on the devastating California fires, the long-lasting drought on the Colorado Plateau, and the flooding in the Northeastern United States. The influence of the warm, moist Pacific Ocean has spared the Pacific Northwest from some of the significant impacts of climate change. Still, over the last decade, the region has suffered from large forest fires on the eastern slopes of the Cascades, as well as dry spells affecting agriculture and fisheries.
The hike Dave and I made up the Sourdough Mountain Trail was made memorable by the lush forest, which provided cooling shade in an otherwise dry and hot south-facing aspect. The transition from this canopy through the more open subalpine meadows was a portal to the nirvana of mountain scenery. It is unknown how much immediate impact the Sourdough Mountain fire had on the trail leading up to Stetattle Ridge and Elephant Butte. Several other recent fires in the Chilliwack River/Bear Creek drainages and at Downey Creek in the Glacier Peak Wilderness have necessitated closing trails for years to allow crews to cut down trees and stabilize slopes for safe passage. Those fires were in very remote areas normally only visited by avid backpackers.
The “Elephant in the Room” metaphor refers to something too taboo to discuss openly. In many quarters, climate change is such a topic. One cannot ignore the scars of the Sourdough Mountain fire, along with the Newhalem fires of 2015 and the 2021 Cedar Creek fire near Mazama, above Highway 20. Though fires are part of the forest ecosystem, the recent increase in both frequency and severity of fire events in the Cascades seems to represent a new normal.
4. The Largest Elephant of All
A recent article in the Seattle Times quoted a forest service ranger stating that over 100,000 hikers visited the iconic Enchantment Lakes last year, mostly on extended day hikes, as the coveted overnight permits are obtained only via a lottery, which is almost impossible to win. Over a single afternoon, as many as 1000 hikers have been recorded at Colchuck Lake. On a typical summer weekend, the Artist Point parking lot near Mt. Baker is full by mid-morning, with cars lining the hairpin corners back down to the Lake Ann trailhead. An autumn weekend may have more than 400 cars lining the North Cascades Highway by the Maple Pass and Blue Lake trailheads. During the Perseid meteor showers last summer, crowds overwhelmed the Sunrise parking lot at Mt. Rainier National Park. Some trampled the fragile meadows in an attempt to find enough space to view the night sky.
My most recent overnight trip to the high campsite on Sahale Arm in North Cascades National Park required a very lengthy wait at the Marblemount Ranger station to secure a permit. The Park now issues, through Recreation.gov, advance backcountry camping permits in early spring for the majority of campsites, leaving a small percentage available on a first-come basis, so I felt incredibly lucky to score a permit to visit this highly desired camp, which has only six permitted sites.
Our small group ascended 4000+ feet in mist and fog to the wildly exposed campsite. The following morning, we took advantage of clearing skies to summit Sahale Peak, expecting to savor the remarkable views from our remote campsite when we descended at day’s end. To our dismay, we discovered our tenting zone completely overrun by dozens of day hikers who had raced up the trail starting in the dark. The noise from music and cell phone conversations filled the air, ruining any hope that our group could enjoy a communion with nature in one of North America’s most spectacular backcountry locations. Reluctantly, we admitted defeat, packed our gear, and descended to the parking lot, passing more than a hundred hikers heading up.
It has truly become a “tragedy at the commons” where an increasingly large population’s use of a limited resource dilutes the value of that resource for everyone. The resources allocated to parks, wilderness areas, and national/state forests have not increased. At the same time, the population in the surrounding areas continues to grow, at times exponentially. The desire to experience nature has also exploded, partly due to the enforced isolation wrought by the pandemic. Resource managers, both at the national and state levels, are challenged with the unenviable task of providing access while, at the same time, protecting the resource. The “Elephant” of overcrowding and population growth may be the most significant dilemma of all.
Wilderness is a place on the map. Wildness is a quality of being uncontrolled. These two words, so similar in spelling, may be increasingly difficult to find together.
Embracing the uncertainty of true adventure has been a driving theme in Bob Kandiko’s lifestyle. Choosing “the new and the unknown” has not always been easy, but the rewards have been huge. He is planning more adventures.
