Tag Archives: Picket Range

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. …

The North Cascades offer some of North America’s most spectacular mountain scenery, with more peaks that rise 3,000 feet in the last horizontal mile to their summits than any other range on Earth. But these mountains—in addition to their dramatic topography—also offer sublime intimacies: incandescent moss gardens, snow-melt pools reflecting the sky, twisted Krumholtz trees clinging to the fractured rock, …

As the snow begins to retreat in the North Cascades, and the color scheme ever so slowly shifts from white to green, I get the itch. Of course, having plied these North Cascades for numerous happy decades, I am used to waiting: there’s a lot of snow up there, and it melts out slowly, unveiling the verdant greenery in its …

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 …

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 …

My heavy boot balances on a small ledge just below the crest of the knife-edge ridge. Before fully weighting each step, I check my footing by gently tapping the rock. A misplaced step or broken hold would send me tumbling down the cliff. With a 70-pound pack throwing off my balance, I strain to move without tipping sideways. Finally the …

In the wood there are paths, mostly overgrown, that come to an abrupt stop where the wood is untrodden. – Martin Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track (1950) Having been away from the Picket Range for more than 40 years, I was eager to try my hand at the much vaunted bushwhacks for which it is famous. The managers of the …

I’ve been fortunate to live in the Pacific Northwest nearly all my life.  I started enjoying our spectacular outdoors as an avid hiker, backpacker, and eventually climber.  I was introduced to photography during this time, and there was no looking back.  My camera went everywhere with me, and soon dictated my destinations more so than any climbing objectives.  I’ve enjoyed …