For some reason, I’ve always thought of the North Cascades as too far to go for a regular weekend. This weekend we kicked off our new plan for Fall and Winter camping by leaving on Saturday morning (well, we ended up leaving much later than that!) instead of trying to get out of town on Friday night and setting up camping in the dark. It worked just fine.

We spent the night at the nearly closed Colonial Creek Campground where we happened to bump into an avid hiker we see around town. He invited us to share his campfire and then recommended Maple Pass for our Sunday morning hike, raving about the views and promising that if we wanted to be back in Seattle for super, we’d have no problems.

He was right on all accounts. This has got to be the easiest hike with the most spectacular mountain scenery I’ve ever done in Washington State. It might not be for five year olds, but anyone in reasonably good shape could probably manage it. And the North Cascades? Not as far as I thought….we’re definitely planning some more hiking and maybe short packing backpacking trip here next year.