The northwest corner of the United States has seen a lot of action, geologically speaking. It’s still going on, subtly but relentlessly, and the perceptive can witness the effects in four of our national parks. Those parks reside in three states and have become the star attractions of the Cascade Range, a 10-million-acre region with a collection of mountains that were built in almost every way that mountains can be.
North Cascades National Park, for example, shows what happens when the moisture of a huge body of water–in this case the Pacific Ocean and its Puget Sound–contributes sediment for the mountain-building process and moisture for tons of snow. The snow sticks around for years and forms glaciers–more than 300, a number exceeded only by Alaska’s collection. The glaciers flow downward, gouging valleys and fissures and toppling a few pinnacles in the process.
Off to the northwest, just outside North Cascades National Park, Mt. Baker has been shaped by powerful magma flows into a handsome volcanic cone. Farther south, another volcano, Mt. Rainier, serves as the centerpiece of national park No. 2. On one of those rare clear days in rainy Seattle, you can see Mt. Rainier from the top deck of the Space Needle. Seattleites call it “the mountain,” but it lacks geologic permanence. Like its neighbor Mt. St. Helens, Rainier could blow apart some day.
Beautiful Crater Lake National Park, in Oregon, features a water-filled volcanic caldera, the deep blue waters inside the hollowed-out remains of a mountain called Mazama. And Lassen Volcanic National Park still bubbles with the hot energy that builds inside the Earth’s core. In Lassen, the volcanic minefield remains very much alive. Its eruptions came in recent times, not geologic eons ago. We have photographs to prove it–taken in 1915.
The Cascades are a remarkable stretch of landscape, 500 miles of it–extending from Mt. Shasta in California to the Fraser River in British Columbia: Seemingly endless granite peaks in the north and terrain tortured and beautified by volcanoes in the south.
North Cascades National Park and Mt. Rainier National Park more or less represent the two extremes. Not many park-goers attempt to visit all four parks in a single trip. I did it toward the end of last summer and found the grandeur overwhelming but strangely comforting in days otherwise gripped by the terrorism taking place a continent away.
Even in the best of times, it’s easy to find solitude in North Cascades National Park. It’s there for the viewing from a slice of Ross Lake National Recreation Area, but the park proper is virtually all wilderness. No roads traverse it, and many of the trails pose a challenge even to the fit and adventurous.
A casual, hurried and distracted visitor like me still could find a lot of places to stand and gape in wonder, walk in the silence of magnificent forests and shrink to almost nothing in surroundings of such immense scale.
Ranger Jessica Toubman did her best to explain why people do trickle in for the fun available in the two recreation areas that embrace the raw wilderness of the national park. Ross Lake and Lake Chelen Recreation Areas don’t qualify as national parks, because they have artificial aspects. A dam at the town of Chelen made Lake Chelen deeper. Ross Lake and Diablo Lake are reservoirs held back by dams along the Skagit River. The hydro power electrifies Seattle.
Toubman directed me to take a short stroll outside the visitor center and down toward the Skagit. “The gravel bar there is a great place to look for salmon,” she told me. “Or park by the little kiosk building on the way out to the campground and look across the bridge. Live, active salmon come splashing around there. Eagles start coming up for the salmon in the fall, when there’s a much larger run. January is a peak time for eagles around here. We get about 1,500.”
I missed the salmon and the eagles as I wandered around. Just one of those slow weeks. Most of the wildlife has set up housekeeping deep in the national park. And for a long time it was assumed that the North Cascades had been far too rugged for human habitation in those prehistoric times before the first adventurers, mountaineers and Gold Rush prospectors passed through.
“People thought, `Ah, Indians weren’t here. What would they be up here for?'” Toubman said. “There wasn’t any evidence, because the material they used was wood. It breaks down so quickly in this environment.” But a staff expert recently has uncovered 260 archeological sites. “They’re all through the park,” Toubman said, “from the mountain peaks down through the valleys.” A short boardwalk near the visitor center leads to a campsite that hunter-gatherers used some 1,400 years ago. It might not look like much, but you have to consider the setting. Across that nearby forest, those early residents would have seen the formidable Picket Range. No doubt they managed to hunt and fish in the foothills. And they were relative newcomers. A few of the sites indicate a human presence in the Cascades as many as 8,000 years ago. Even the later pioneers with their steel tools and camping equipment found a lot of those mountains untamable. The names they gave the summits say it all: Mt. Challenger, Mt. Terror, Mt. Despair, Damnation Peak . . .
Another interesting settlement that might intrigue future anthropologists is Newhalem, the town that Seattle City Light built. The utility’s dams along the Skagit River generate about 25 percent of Seattle’s electric power. They make the Skagit bulge to form Gorge Lake, Diablo Lake and the fiord-like Ross Lake.
The Cascades are called that for a reason. Waterfalls splash all over the range, as meltoff from snow and glaciers engorges the rivers, creeks and lakes. Parts of the Skagit and Diablo Lake have turned a brilliant green, because the minerals, or “rock flour,” dumped into the water from the mountain-scouring glaciers absorb most of the spectrum except green. All of the waters–whether shaped by dams, plummeting from high-elevation creeks, in lakes carved by glaciers, or the glaciers themselves–make the park and its surrounding recreation areas supremely beautiful.
I followed the main (and only) highway, Washington 20, as it dipped southward, leaving the Ross Lake National Recreation Area to run through a portion of Okanogan National Forest. There, the highway runs parallel to the national park’s South Unit. Trails off the highway allowed me a brush with the national park at Easy Pass and beautiful Rainy Lake. Then the highway turned east again, and I paused at Washington Pass.
From the scenic overlook, the park may be visible, but then again it may not, because I had long since lost track of the boundaries that surveyors have somehow managed to devise. From where I stood, Liberty Bell Mountain and the Early Winter Spires performed scenic histrionics–dramatic, sheer cliffs and pinnacles of stone, so close but so difficult to touch. Those features were not in North Cascades National Park. They are in Okanogan National Forest, or maybe they belong to the adjoining Lake Chelan-Sawtooth Wilderness. So confusing.
But no matter. All of that belongs to the Cascade Range. I had reached the east side of the range, the dry side. The western slopes receive moisture from Puget Sound, about 60 miles away. The moisture feeds roaring streams that turn on the lights in Seattle. It builds the kind of winter accumulations that keep the highway closed from mid-November to the beginning of April and takes up residence on glaciers that never completely melt.
Just before I left, I asked resort owner Andie Daniels to name some of her favorite hiking trails. One was at Hidden Lake, a lovely recipient of the melt from lofty Eldorado Glacier. “I like that one,” she said, “but last year I went up there in what must have been the latter part of July or early August. And I got turned around because of snow.”
North Cascades facts
Established as a national park: Oct. 2, 1968.
Area: 684,000 acres, including two national recreation areas and national wilderness.
Visitors: 25,739 in 2001.
Location: 56 miles east of Interstate Highway 5 Burlington exit on Washington Highway 20.
Flora and fauna: Trees range from silver fir to birch and maple. Alpine flowers and glacier lilies color the valleys. Wildlife includes mule deer, pika, marmots, mountain goats, salmon, ravens, ptarmigans and western tanager.
Entrance fee: None. Dock and parking fees are $5 daily.
North Cascades main sights
1. Newhalem
The park visitor center affords a wonderful view of the Picket Range and a sampling of the 300 glaciers that dot the hanging valleys (most glaciers of any park in the lower 48) that hold impacted snow in the mountains’ upper reaches. Up the road, Newhalem, the town, has a visitor center of its own that explains the workings of the nearby dams serving Seattle City Light.
2. Gorge Dam and Gorge Creek Falls
The first of three dams visitors encounter, moving west to east, its trails provide a fine view of the falls and the concrete hulk holding back Gorge Lake (a bulge in the Skagit River).
3. Colonial Creek campground and Thunder Creek Trail
Here, hikers can trek to viewpoints of the largest concentration of glaciers in the park. Big trees shade the trail–Douglas firs and towering birches, most of them slathered with moss.
4. Diablo Lake overlook
The water is a startling shade of green from the finely ground minerals dumped into the water by those relentless glaciers. The lake and Diablo Dam aren’t in the park, but those impressive nearby peaks–such as Davis, Colonial and Pyramid Peaks and Sourdough Mountain–certainly are.
5. Ross Lake overlook
The man-made lake created by massive Ross Dam in the 1940s extends 24 miles north into Canada. Glaciated mountains rise above the water. Hidden archeological sites along the west bank prove that people had settled in the area as long as 8,000 years ago.
6. Washington Pass overlook
In Okanogan National Forest the highway dips south and then rises again for a splendid view of Liberty Bell Mountain, the Early Winter Spires and the staggering vastness.
Mt. Rainier
The softies who want to see the Cascade Range through their windshields or from the more forgiving trails must seize the opportunity during a short season. I was told before I left home that I might not get a good look at Mt. Rainier–my next stop and gateway to the volcanic Cascades–because clouds tend to linger around the summit and sometimes descend well into the valleys. But I was in luck. As I headed south, the sky stayed a brilliant blue, and as I approached the national park, the mountain hit me with full force. Mt. Whitney–the tallest mountain in the lower 48–is slightly higher, 14,494 feet vs. Rainier’s 14,410, but Whitney is a peak standing only a few heads taller than other parts of the Sierra Nevada Range in California. Mt. Rainier rises 11,000 feet from its base and immediately lets you know it’s the biggest kid on the block–by far.
What does a parkgoer do with something like that? I felt compelled to drive around it, look at it from as many angles as possible, because it has a remarkable presence. Its symmetrical slopes hold 25 glaciers, impacted snow from the continual bombardment of Pacific Ocean moisture that freezes before falling on the heights. From Sunrise, the highest point in the park (6,400 feet) reachable by vehicle, Rainier is s a massive wall of blinding white that shoves all other features off the horizon. From the Reflection Lakes, conversely, it poses with benign dignity, both above the water and shoreline forests and on the water’s surface.
In short, I had a hard time turning my back on Mt. Rainier. Yet, when I did, I found the park holds a panoply of Cascades-style features: the massive hardwood trees in the Grove of the Patriarchs, many waterfalls, the impressive and far-reaching and heavily wooded Stevens Canyon, the pristine woodlands along the Ohanapecosh River.
And then there’s Paradise.
A picturesque lodge faces the mountain. So does a futuristic visitor center and, of course, a full menu of magical views when the weather cooperates. From Paradise, the mountain looks inviting and permanent, but this is the gateway to the volatile segment of the Cascade Range. This is part of the circumference of the “Ring of Fire,” volcanic ranges that roughly circle the Pacific and include about 75 percent of the Earth’s active volcanoes. The ring results from the meeting of tectonic plates. Mt. Rainier was blasted out when the Pacific Juan de Fuca plate dived under the North American continental plate. Lava flowed from breaks in the seams, and fragmented rock piled up–processes that began the construction of Mt. Rainier about 1 million years ago. A volcano born that way is known as a composite. Those made purely from lava are called cinder cones, and the Cascade Range has several examples.
The white peak speaks of nature’s brutality, but on the lower reaches of Mt. Rainier, visitors experience the delicacy of wildflowers and alpine tundra. At Sunrise, the visitor complex at 6,400 feet above sea level, people get to see the glaciers almost at eye level, while glorious meadows struggle to survive on nearly barren slopes. “We have terrible soil here,” said ranger Todd Smith, as he led a few visitors on a tour of the meadowlands. But thanks to the efforts of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 1930s, the meadows damaged by early motorists were replanted. After the road to Sunrise first opened in the Roaring Twenties, visitors could drive their cars over the flowers and grass and spread their blankets and build their fires anywhere they chose. From a distance, the fields look lush and inviting. That’s because visitors no longer are allowed to tread on them. An infusion of cheap labor will not come to the rescue and repair the damage this time around.
“Each of us who love this place has a special responsibility,” Smith said. “One is to keep coming here and enjoying the place. No. 2 is, follow the basic rules and stay on the trails. And No. 3, encourage your friends and family, the people you care about, to come to these places so that they’ll love them too. And the park will have even more support. All you have to do is keep coming here and keep loving the place.”
The visitors nodded. And a few yards away, the Sunrise parking lot swarmed with people shrugging into backpacks and grasping their walking sticks. They looked as if they knew exactly where they were going–up the hills and onto the mountain and a vigorous day under the sun. It was clear that most of them had been there before and that they were indeed loving the place.
Mt. Rainier facts
Established as a national park: March 2, 1899.
Area: 235,625 acres.
Visitors: 1,301,103 in 2001.
Location: West-central Washington, about 50 miles southeast of Seattle.
Flora and fauna: Largest subalpine meadows in the Cascade Range, old-growth forests, ferns. Wildlife ranges in size from small rodents to the bull elk and includes mountain lions, bobcats, black-tailed deer, plus hundreds of species of birds, fish and reptiles.
Entrance fee: $10 per vehicle for seven consecutive days.
Mt. Rainier main sights
1. Longmire
The old-fashioned stone and timber buildings house a lodge and, in the 1899 former headquarters building, a museum. A tiny village, Longmire gives visitors a glimpse into the days when this was a 19th Century medicinal springs resort.
2. Paradise
A sub-alpine meadow forms the flowered skirt of Mt. Rainier. Facilities include the main visitor center, Paradise Inn and several trails, all with staggering views.
3. Reflection Lakes
Walk down to the shore and see the big volcanic mountain reflected in clear water surrounded by cliffs and forest.
4. Stevens Ridge
The main road through the park rises miraculously along a magnificent wooded canyon that hints at the vast scale of the Cascades eco-system.
5. Box Canyon
Glacial melt powers Muddy Creek as it roars through a U-shaped depression rasped out by a glacier eons ago.
6. Grove of the Patriarchs
Old-growth trees, including Douglas firs, Western red cedars and Western hemlocks, hint at the pristine forests that once covered much of northwestern Washington.
7. Sunrise
A park road rises up until the visitor comes face to face with the Mt. Rainier glaciers. Expending little effort, one gets a slight sense of what it might be like to climb toward the top.
LASSEN VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARK, Calif.– The Cinder Cone looks brand-new. Its sides slant gracefully toward the pointed top, 700 feet above the lava-cluttered ground. But this is territory where hot rocks and strange formations are measured both in eons and calendars. Mt. St. Helens exploded in 1980. That’s the latest volcanic news from the contiguous states. Cinder Cone may have emerged from some eruptions around 500 A.D.–news only from about the day before yesterday, geologically speaking. Still, the cone doesn’t appear to be a day over 50.
Lassen was named after a 19th Century pioneer and rancher, Peter Lassen, who settled in the area back in the days when Lassen Peak was known as Snow Butte. Volcanic activity must have been evident all over the property, as it is today. Huge chunks of black lava have been strewn across the entire area.
The park still appears to be a hotbed of volcanic activity. Scalding springs and mud pots bubble. Cones, domes, burnt out land, ash heaps and lava litter the landscape. And yet Lassen offers beautiful panoramas too. It serves as a fine example of the way certain kinds of mountains grow out of fire in the bowels of the earth and, overnight, crash and burn, taking a completely different shape in the process.
“Lassen Peak is the southernmost Cascades volcano,” park interpreter Marissa Willever told me. “Here we have all four major types of volcano. A lot of students come to check it out. Otherwise, they’d have to travel all over the world, but here we have a little of each.”
A list of the four major types gives some idea of the geological complexities at work in Lassen Volcanic. Shield cones develop when basaltic lava flows and then hardens into a shape that resembles an inverted saucer. Composite cones combine layers of lava from effusive eruptions and rock fragments from explosions.
Composite headliners include Mts. Rainier, Hood and Shasta. In Lassen, it’s the lesser known but ancient Mt. Tehama. Plug domes happen when viscous lava masses burst suddenly from a vent and form a steep-sided, bulbous mound. Lassen Peak is considered to be the world’s largest example of the plug dome.
Cinder cones develop when magma under high pressure explodes into the air and forms a steep-sided, symmetrical cone. Cinder Cone looks so fresh because it would be easy to suppose that the big pile of cinder might have been poured out of dump trucks just last night, instead of sometime in the distant past.
Since Mt. St. Helens in 1980, experts have been studying the long-term effects of massive eruptions as they can be found in Lassen. The most explosive eruptions from Lassen Peak came in 1915, with lesser bursts (mostly violent outpourings of steam) occurring through 1917. Benjamin Loomis, a park benefactor, took some remarkable photos of the events with smoke clouds fully as awesome as those of Mt. St. Helens. Blowups of the pictures are mounted in the Loomis Museum, a facility the family donated to the park in 1926.
Scientists and the just plain curious have plenty to see if they want to find out what volcanoes can do to the countryside. In spots the land remains barren, as if flowing lava had salted the earth.
Elsewhere in the park, the vegetation slowly grows back. Everywhere, clumps of lava have been hurled down the slopes and the jagged peaks on the horizon are evidence of mountains snapped and crumpled by irresistible forces. Volcanic it certainly is. And experts believe we haven’t seen the end of it by any means.
Lassen Volcanic facts
Established as a national park: Aug. 9, 1916.
Area: 106,372 acres.
Visitors: 376,695 in 2001.
Location: 50 miles east of Red Bluff, Calif.
Flora and fauna: Shrubs, herbs, grasses and trees–mostly conifers–are taking hold in lava-flow areas. Wildlife includes a variety of rodents, bats, black bears, foxes, mountain lions, reptiles and several kinds of trout.
Entrance fee: $10 per vehicle for seven consecutive days.
Lassen Volcanic main sights
1. Sulphur Works
Follow the sulphur smell to an area of bubbling fumaroles and hot springs. They indicate that beneath the crust of this volcanic territory, a lot of hot gas continues to rise.
2. Bumpass Hell
A wildly scenic hike of 3 miles, round trip, reveals this very active and extensive thermal area–hot springs, mud pots and boiling lakes painted a rainbow of colors by various chemicals. An adventurer named Kendall Bumpass discovered the place and, in the process, lost a leg to a severe scalding.
3. Lassen Peak
It rises 10,457 feet above sea level, a volcanic dome. Asleep now, but dozing lightly. In the series of volcanic eruptions that began in 1914, one mountain burst apart. Lassen, however, eventually formed this dome. But the rocks far below it continue to seethe.
4. Devastated Area
After the violent eruptions of 1914-17, the area around Lassen Peak was strewn with volcanic ash, mud and large, black chunks of lava. Much of the lava is still there, but the ground cover, aspens and conifers have turned the once-bleak area green, as vegetation reclaims its territory.
5. Cinder Cone
An eruption back in the 17th or 18th Century may have dumped the volcanic cinders forming the 700-foot cone. The hike to its base covers 1.5 miles, past walls of jagged lava, and then there’s the tough climb to the peak, rewarded by a bird’s-eye view of the park.
6. Painted Dunes
The area around Cinder Cone indicates that not all devastated areas recover with grasses, shrubs and trees. Instead, the dunes here remain barren, streaked with color and beautifully rounded.
7. Chaos Jumbles
As the name implies, a random array of boulders testifies to the power of volcanoes that can hurl tons of stone across the landscape.
8. Loomis Museum
Landowner Benjamin Loomis donated 40 acres and a fine stone building to the park. It contains a visitor center and dramatic displays explaining volcanic activity. Most startling are blowups of the photographs Loomis took of the 1914-17 eruptions that shook this part of California.
CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK, Ore.– Deep into the volcanic landscape of the Cascade Range, I came upon a most incredible sight. It was the cone of a volcano so dormant that the heat and steam have been resolutely capped by unyielding rock. The caldera then filled with water–lots and lots of water. And that, basically, is the incredible sight: A caldera filled with water at such depths that it reflects only the bluest part of the blue spectrum. A deep, deep blue. Almost purple.
But, then, it’s a deep, deep lake–1,958 feet at the deepest end and 1,066 feet on average. A volcano dug the hole 7,700 years ago, when major eruptions caused 12,000-foot Mt. Mazama to collapse. The 6-mile-wide caldera (Spanish for cauldron) remained, and over the course of centuries it filled with water, most of it from years of heavy snowfall.
Well, water doesn’t exactly fill the crater. More accurately, the hole is half empty. Its walls rise up as high as 2,000 feet above the lake surface. This is the deepest lake in the United States and seventh deepest in the world and a magnet for the eyes. As I drove around it, the lake kept commanding me to stop and look, get out of the car and admire it from another angle, take another picture that no one back home would believe.
Scientists explain that the water is perfectly clear to a depth of 123 feet. Part of its blueness is a reflection of the sky. Most bodies of water can do that.
But Crater Lake’s water molecules interact with sunlight in a special way. Colors in the spectrum with long wavelengths, such as yellow, red and orange, are swiftly absorbed near the surface. Short wavelengths, especially blue, penetrate most deeply, where the water molecules scatter them far and wide, as the electrons in the molecules soak up light and begin to vibrate.
That spreads the deepest blue–the blue that people see–from great depths. Even the color of a volcanic lake results from a sort of violence.
The road around Crater Lake covers 33 miles, but it insists that you take it slow and absorb its beauty. For example, there are several angles from which to view wooded Wizard Island, a volcanic peak that rises 764 feet above the surface.
From the rim, it appears small and friendly. I had to picture how it might look from the Wizard Island beach with 70 stories worth of rock rising abruptly overhead.
The excursion boat that goes over there was closed for the season. The sight of a small formation called Phantom Ship also requires summoning the imagination. If you stare at it long enough and the cloud shadows are just right, it seems to move–a gray vessel with sharp, pointed sails billowing majestically.
One afternoon, I finally tore myself away to drive out the road along Pinnacle Valley to the Pinnacles Overlook. Suddenly the world of blue set off by green conifers and the jagged walls of a blown mountain disappeared entirely. The volcanic activity did something quite different in this part of the park. Long after the big eruptions of 7,700 years ago, lava continued to bubble, heating fumaroles–cylindrical vents spewing gases and forming a kind of cement that made the cylinders permanent. They were holes in the ground, initially, but the softer materials that surrounded them eventually eroded away, leaving a valley of strange, pointed pinnacles, like a forest of evergreens all made out of stone.
Out beyond the crater, in another direction, is an enormous desert of pumice left by the eruptions and making the soil hostile to anything that grows. It’s gray and drab, but attractive in its own way. Think of it as an unobtrusive setting for that amazing sapphire gem.
Crater Lake facts
Established as a national park: May 22, 1902.
Area: 183,224 acres.
Visitors: 457,373 in 2001.
Location: Southwestern Oregon.
Flora and fauna: Whitebark and lodgepole pines, subalpine firs, lichen and many kinds of wildflowers grow on the slopes and in the meadows. Mule deer, ground squirrels, coyotes, bobcats and a great assortment of birds live in the park or migrate here annually.
Entrance fee: $10 per vehicle, good for seven consecutive days.
Crater Lake main sights
1. Mazama Village
While loading up on gas and supplies you catch a glimpse of the Cascades as mountainside–forest and rock without a hint of the pinnacle to come.
2. Rim Village
There it is, the magnificent lake and a wonderful, rustic lodge in which to sit and look at it–plus a large, log-hewn refreshment and souvenir building and a visitor center. A great place to start, and the mule deer feed right on the lawn.
3. Wizard Island
This bit of green, 1,000 feet below the crater rim, adds some natural punctuation to the deep blue of Crater Lake, the caldera of Mt. Mazama. After Mt. Mazama erupted and then collapsed into itself 7,700 years ago, a few subsequent eruptions created another volcano, and Wizard Island is it.
4. Hillman Peak
A typical upthrust along the walls of the caldera, it rises 8,151 feet above sea level and once was a part of Mt. Mazama.
5. Pumice Desert
The desolation of long-past volcanic eruptions still marks the foothills of Mt. Mazama–virtually treeless and light gray landscape framing distant volcanic cinder cones of the Cascade Range volcanic front.
6. Cleetwood Trail
A steep, mile-long descent to lake level, 724 feet below. It’s the only safe way to climb down. At trail’s end is a boat dock, where summertime visitors may board an excursion vessel for a two-hour jaunt around the lake or a fishing and hiking visit to Wizard Island.
7. Cloudcap Overlook
Another fine view across the lake is posted with a sign explaining the Klamath Indian legends that surrounded this mysterious feature of the Cascade Range. In the opposite direction is Mt. Scott, 8,929 feet, which became the highest mountain in the vicinity after Mazama’s peak collapsed.
8. Phantom Ship Overlook
Another small island, also made of lava, resembles a ship. And when shadows from the caldera wall strike it a certain way, it seems to move, or even disappear.
A guide to the Cascades Range parks
Getting there
To visit all four Cascade Range parks in one trip, you might begin with a flight to Seattle. From SeaTac International Airport, take Interstate Highway 5 north to the Burlington exit and follow Washington Highway 20 east to North Cascades National Park.
After that visit, proceed south to Mt. Rainier National Park by returning to I-5 and taking it to Interstate Highway 405, bypassing Seattle. Exit at Washington Highway 167 and follow that south to Washington Highway 161 until it meets Washington Highway 7. Take Washington 7 east to Washington Highway 706, which continues east toward the park entrance. The biggest jump is from Rainier to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. About 10 miles west of Rainier’s Nisqually entrance on Washington 706, take a left (south) on Washington 7 and, 17 miles later, take a right on U.S. Highway 12 for the 30-mile ride to southbound I-5. After about 60 miles, you’re approaching Portland and the Interstate Highway 205 bypass. Take that south, rejoin I-5 and proceed for 147 miles to Roseburg and eastbound Oregon Highway 138, which drops down into the park 81 miles later. Finally, the last leg descends into northern California, where the Cascades end and the Sierras begin–at Lassen Volcanic National Park. Oregon 138 heads north out of Crater Lake, and a sharp left on Oregon Highways 230 and 62 takes you southwest–after a 60-mile jaunt–back to southbound I-5, where the 182-mile drive to Red Bluff awaits. From Red Bluff proceed east on California Highway 36 to the Lassen Volcanic main entrance, about 50 miles away.
Rather than backtrack to Seattle for the flight home, it makes sense to book a return flight out of Reno, about 125 miles east of Lassen Volcanic.
Getting around
Oddly, windshield tourists may never set foot in North Cascades National Park, because the main highway, Washington 20, travels east and west through Ross Lake National Recreation Area. That unit is a beautiful but partly man-made series of lakes and dams. The recreation area separates the north and south portions of the national park. Still, the scenery from the viewpoints on Washington 20 and trails leading off of it is mostly pure, mountainous North Cascades N.P., as far as the eye can see. Hikers may get into those national park areas on hundreds of miles of trails. Bikers also are welcome on the highway and certain side roads. Boaters can cruise the Skagit, Stehekin and Nooksack Rivers. To reach Stehekin, a tiny community in the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area, visitors must eschew motor vehicles and hike, ride horseback, use a private boat, the commercial ferry or board a float plane. Sound remote? It is.
Beautiful drives provide many dramatic angles for a look at the eponymous volcanic mountain in Mt. Rainier National Park. That is, if frequent cloud cover parts long enough for a full view. The trails also contribute wonderful sightings. About 10,000 people a year attempt the climb to the summit, and half of them succeed. In winter, visitors may strap on the skis.
At Crater Lake National Park, the obvious move is a drive around the lake, but hikers get an even wider choice of views, bikers may pedal to their hearts’ content and even scuba divers can gaze into the lake’s clear depths with the aid of a summer-only excursion boat. In winter, the snows come big-time, roads close, and that’s when cross-country skiers and snowmobile fans start licking their chops.
You can get a thorough education in the dynamics of volcanoes at Lassen Volcanic National Park, where every turn on the scenic park highways offers a view of hot springs, or half-blasted domes, or lava fields. Hiking trails provide even better close-ups of the devastation. And in winter, of course, out come the cross-country skis.
When to visit
This is one of the supreme snow belts in the world, and although the parks stay open, roads–or portions of roads–close in winter, as do most concessions. In fact, some park features disappear under blankets that can easily go 400 inches deep. People who like to frolic in the drifts should visit then. Most will wait for summer (loosely defined as early July to late September), when they’ll have access to everything.
Lodging and food
The surrounding recreation areas contain the bulk of North Cascades’ overnight-stay possibilities–from campgrounds to the lodges at Ross Lake and Lake Chelan, plus a few places in the tiny community of Stehekin. The latter cannot be reached by motor vehicle. A ferry boat goes there; so does a float plane service. Or you can walk. I stayed at a charming little five-cabin complex just outside Marblemount, Wash. It’s called A Cab in the Woods and sports an old yellow Chevy taxi in the front yard (the owners enjoy puns). Nonetheless, the cedar log cabins are spacious and comfortable. Rates start at $415 a week per cabin, October through April. They’re $100 more May through September. 360-873-4106. www.cabinwoods.com.
A general store in Newhalem, along Washington 20, is well-stocked with food and supplies. Nearby towns offer a fair share of decent restaurants.
I bunked outside Mt. Rainier, too, in the comfortable but non-prepossessing Nisqually Lodge in Ashford, five minutes from the southwest entrance (360-569-8804). Nightly summer rates are in the $80 range. In the park are several campgrounds and two picturesque inns with dining facilities: National Park Inn (open year-round) and Paradise Inn (mid-May to early October). More details on both are available from the concessionaire: 360-569-2400; www.guestservices.com/rainier.
A handsome lodge graces the shoreline at Crater Lake with a rather sophisticated dining room and 71 rooms upstairs ($117-$227). Crater Lake Lodge opens May 20 and closes Oct. 20. From June 8 through Oct. 8, Mazama Village Motor Inn, about 7 miles south of the lake, is another possibility for those who need a roof over their heads ($98 per room). To obtain more information on both, call 541-830-8700. Lost Creek Campground has 16 sites for tent camping only. Groceries are available at Mazama Village in the large visitor complex. Surrounding towns, none of which are closer to the park than 20 miles, offer a range of lodging, food and services. I stayed in Prospect, Ore., at the Prospect Historical Hotel. Former tenants Zane Grey, Teddy Roosevelt and Jack London left the place immaculate. It has 10 frilly sleeping rooms in the main house and 15 comfortable motel units. High season prices go from $60 to $135. 800-944-6490 or 541-560-3664; www.prospecthotel.com.
Remote Drakesbad Guest Ranch (530-529-1512) and the park’s 417 camp sites (costing from $8 to $14 a night) are the only formal overnight possibilities in Lassen Volcanic. Otherwise it’s snooze in the backcountry (free permit required), or head for one of the nearby towns. I selected Lassen Mineral Lodge in Mineral, Calif.–bare-bones rooms, but clean. An adequate restaurant, general store and gift shop complete the picture. Less than $40 a night in season. 530-595-4422. www.minerallodge.com.
Accessibility
Visitor information stations and most campgrounds at North Cascades feature accessible restrooms. Several trails off Washington 20 are surfaced for wheelchairs.
Most visitor centers, restrooms picnic areas and certain campsites in Mt. Rainier are accessible, or accessible with help for wheelchair users. An accessible boardwalk allows access to the Kautz Creek overlook to view the 1947 debris flow and the mountain.
Visitor facilities around the Rim Village and several overlooks are accessible at Crater Lake.
Numerous facilities, including most restrooms, stores and the Loomis Museum are accessible in Lassen Volcanic.
Information
North Cascades: 810 State Route 20, Sedro-Woolley, WA 98284-9394; 360-856-5700; www.nps.gov/noca.
Mt. Rainier: Tahoma Woods, Star Route, Ashford, WA 98304-9751; 360-569-2211 ext. 3314; e-mail MORAInfo@nps.gov; www.nps.gov/mora.
Crater Lake: P.O. Box 7, Crater Lake, OR 97604; 541-594-3000; e-mail Craterlake-Info@nps.gov; www.nps.gov/crla.
Lassen Volcanic: P.O. Box 100, Mineral, CA 96063-0100; 530-595-4444; www.nps.gov/lavo.
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E-mail Robert Cross: bcross@tribune. com
