United States
North Cascades
More glaciers than any park in the lower forty-eight, yet almost no one comes.
Glaciers spill from every ridge like frozen rivers caught mid-fall, their meltwater pooling in lakes so turquoise they look chemically altered. The valleys below disappear into old-growth forest dense enough to swallow sound. North Cascades National Park in Washington holds more glaciers than anywhere else in the lower forty-eight states, and almost no one comes to see them.
North Cascades is the range they call the American Alps: jagged peaks crowned by more than 300 glaciers above more than 300 alpine lakes and dense evergreen forest, yet it remains among the least visited national parks in the country. Stehekin, the community at the head of Lake Chelan, has no road connection at all: you arrive by boat, by seaplane or on foot. The North Cascades Highway crosses the range beneath the peaks and closes each winter under avalanche snow, and Diablo Lake beside it glows an unnatural glacial green from rock flour, bedrock ground to powder by the ice above and held suspended in the meltwater.
Solo
The solitude of North Cascades backcountry, glacier-fed lakes and alpine meadows at the end of long approaches, is earned through effort rather than luck, in terrain to match any of the famous parks.
Friends
Multi-day traverses through glacier country, boat access to a roadless community, and summit attempts on Cascade peaks offer the kind of shared physical challenge that bonds a group. The hand-made bakery waiting in Stehekin doesn't hurt.
- More than 300 glaciers crown the jagged peaks: the greatest concentration in the United States outside Alaska.
- Stehekin, up at Lake Chelan's head, has no road connection: arrivals come by boat, seaplane or trail.
- Diablo Lake glows glacial green from suspended rock flour, bedrock ground to powder by the ice above.
- The scenery earns the nickname the American Alps, with over 300 alpine lakes beneath the ice.
Everything at Stehekin Pastry Company is made by hand, in a roadless village you reached by boat. Come see what the fuss is about.
Stock up in Marblemount, the last full-service stop before the passes; services along the highway corridor are scarce by design.
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