Jason Griffith

Backcountry Bliss: A Week at the Asulkan Cabin

I am not a gambler, but I won the lottery this past March when I was invited to spend a week at the Asulkan Cabin on the British Columbia/Alberta border. The cabin is renowned for being situated in the heart of excellent ski terrain and sits at treeline (7000 feet) next to several large glaciers. In winter, it is accessed …

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A Winter’s Day at Coleman Pinnacle

The Mt. Baker Highway is unusual. As one of Washington’s few high mountain roads that remains (mostly) open in winter, it provides access to the alpine that otherwise just isn’t feasible in other parts of the North Cascades due to a combination of snowed-in roads and the abbreviated daylight hours of winter. The Highway, officially known as SR-542, is plowed …

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The Other Mountain: Mt. Shuksan in Winter

Anyone who has driven up the Mount Baker Highway to Heather Meadows knows that Mt. Shuksan is hard to ignore. This spectacular mountain rises over 7,700 vertical feet from the North Fork of the Nooksack River in less than three miles, radical topography even by North Cascades standards.  Icefalls cascade down from her northern flanks and the summit pyramid towers …

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Traversing the Pickets with General Weakness

Images stick with me. I’ll often plan a trip around a specific place that I’ve seen either on a screen, a print, a slide, or just in my mind’s eye after looking at a map. Frenzel Camp is such a spot, its draw powerful enough to compel a seven-day traverse from Goodell Creek to the Big Beaver Valley just to …

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Thin Air and Rich Light: The Mountain Photography of Jason Griffith

Although I grew up on the west side of the Cascade Range, I didn’t really start getting serious about the mountains until I was at the University of Washington in the mid-90’s. As I started hiking, then scrambling, then climbing, I was (and still am) drawn north. The North Cascades have probably the best mountaineering in the lower 48, but …

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