Short trip to the breathtaking North Cascades

[woodswalker]

Wow, yet another place I want to go and it has lookouts too! I can relate to the disappointment, since my vacation this year also got shortened. I've been monitoring the weather in various places that I have in mind for hikes and it seems like we are having way more lightening activity than normal. I'm used to the possibility of an afternoon lightening and rain shower when you are in the mountain ranges, but the forecasts have been predicting them daily in many areas. On Wednesday afternoon and evening it rained so hard that the ground had a sheet of standing water in the Wallowas. As usual your pictures are great and you go to all the best places.
Woodswalker

[olderthanIusedtobe]

Sorry that your trip got cut short, but it looks like you had a great 3 days while you were able to get out on the trails! You hit some of my favorite hikes. Such beautiful country, I never get too much of it.

[Don Nelsen]

What a great place and thanks so much for the excellent photos and report! Sorry about the weather shortening your trip but looks like you got a lot done in the time you had.

dn

[justpeachy]

Such beautiful country, I never get too much of it.

Yeah, I have a feeling that the North Cascades will become like the Wallowas for me, a stunningly beautiful place that I can go back to again and again and again but never get tired of it.

[R11]

On the way down we saw a grouse family! We kept our distance but watched the four babies and snapped pictures. Here's one of them:




Mama kept a wary eye on us.

Ptarmigans!


ron

[Roy]

To bad about the weather we already had brief discussion about that I know exactly how it feels. It always amazes me how much bigger everything is up there. It is worthy of the National Park they awarded it.

[olderthanIusedtobe]

I get confused on ID'ing ptarmigan sometimes. For a while I assumed everything was, but there are definitely grouse up in the alpine or sub-alpine areas that aren't ptarmigan. If they are all white or in a transitional phase then it's really easy to tell. But when their camo is dialed in I've practically stepped on them several times before I realized they were even there.

[romann]

Awesome photos and report, good info on best hikes in that area (I'll save a link to your TR in case I come to visit there). That view over Doubtful Lake is something . Too bad about the weather but you got some spectacular hikes early on.

[hiker4fun]

Stunning pictures. It would have been awesome if you got to do the entire planned hikes, but I am sure even these hikes so far was amazing. After seeing Adam's TR and your pictures, this is on my wish list for sure.

[justpeachy]

Ptarmigans!

Oh my gosh, I hadn't even considered that! I just did a Google image search for ptarmagins and grouse and they can look REALLY similar!