Disclaimer: I’ve heard that this border crossing is now closed and I don’t believe it’s possible to do this hike from the Canadian side anymore. Below recounts my experience doing the hike in 2024, I wouldn’t advise doing this hike at this time.

The thing I love about BC is that there’s something to do in every season. I love skiing and snowshoeing in the Winter, and kayaking in the Spring, but there’s no question that backpacking season is my favourite. As soon as the warm weather hits, I always get the itch to go to the mountains. But it takes the snow a lot longer to melt in the mountains than in the city, so I always have to impatiently wait until almost July for alpine hiking (though there are still opportunities at lower elevations). 

It was a very poor ski season last winter, so I was expecting an early alpine season this year. Unfortunately, we ended up getting a lot of late season snow, and it’s been a cooler and rainier Spring than normal, so by the time July hit, there was still a lot of snow in the mountains. In the long run, I know this is a good thing for wildfire season, but it left me scrambling to find a trip for the Canada Day long weekend.

I monitor the snow in the mountains in several ways. First, I always check Sentinel Playground/Copernicus Browser, which has satellite imagery that allows you to check the snow levels. Availability of data depends on having a cloudless day when the satellite rolls over your area of interest, but generally you can get data on the conditions within the last 2 weeks. Second, I check AllTrails for trail reviews from other users, and finally, I search the location on instagram for recent photos. All this effort confirmed that most of the trails on my hiking list were still inundated with snow.

I spent weeks scouring the internet and maps, looking for an alternative that I hadn’t already done, wouldn’t have permits, and would be appropriate for my husband, Seth, and our dog, Sadie. After much searching, I stumbled upon a very interesting option – the Hozomeen Lake Trail.

Hozomeen Lake is located in North Cascades National Park in Washington State. It’s just south of Skagit Valley Provincial Park and east of Ross Lake. What makes this hike unique is that it’s primarily accessible from Canada, but there’s no formal border crossing. Silver Skagit Road continues through the entirety of Skagit Valley Park, and a few kilometres past the border, but it’s not a manned crossing, so there’s no border control (though there are cameras). Pre-pandemic, you could drive across the border and there were a series of frontcountry campsites located on Ross Lake. But the gate has been closed to vehicles since the pandemic and the campsites are no longer maintained. 

Fortunately for us, there is a series of backcountry trails that extend all the way down to Highway 20 in the US, and it appears that they are still being maintained. It’s a 2km hike on the road to the trailhead, and then ~6km of hiking along a forest trail to Hozomeen Lake, which sits at the base of Hozomeen Mountain. Me and Brandon hiked to the base of Hozomeen Mountain via the Skyline II and Hozomeen Ridge Trail in Manning Park in 2017, so we were excited to explore the trail from the other side of the mountain. 

Hozomeen Lake is beautiful and doesn’t receive many visitors, so it was a great pick for my extremely anxious dog. It does require a camping permit to stay there, which can be obtained from the National Park Service (NPS) via email. They only issue permits on the day before your trip, but the Ranger is really nice and called me the morning before the hike. I guess some other people emailed ahead of us because he told me the campsites were already full, but he kindly let us use the group site and gave us a permit for two nights. 

There’s only a few campsites, maybe 3 or 4, but it turns out the group campsite is actually the nicest one! They’re all located in the trees and have tenting areas (but no pads) and eating areas with a fire pit. But the group site is the closest to the lake, which is what makes it the nicest. There’s 2 open-air pit toilets, one for the single sites and one for the group site. The campground was full on our first night, but we didn’t meet any of the campers because everyone had a dog, so we kept our distance since Sadie doesn’t like other dogs. But on the second night, there were only two women at one of the other sites and Sadie adopted them into our herd. 

It’s a pretty easy hike and the trail is super well maintained. The walk along the road is flat and easy for 2km. The first half of the trail is uphill with 400m of elevation gain, but it levels out as you get closer to the lake. It’s pretty much entirely in the trees, but it’s a nice walk and we didn’t see anyone (human or bear) on the way in or out. There was some evidence of bears on the trail, but none at the lake. 

It was overcast on our first day, but very humid, so we hiked in shorts. There was rain in the forecast, so we quickly set up our tents and tarps upon arriving and me and Seth went for a little skinny dip in the lake. Campfires were allowed when we visited, so we collected some firewood to store under the tarp for the next evening. It started to drizzle during supper, but it didn’t properly rain until 11pm, which was after we had gone to bed. It’s a gorgeous lake campsite, the only downside is that there is no bear cache. It took me and Brandon a long time to set one up, and I admit, it wasn’t our best work.

It rained pretty hard all night, but tapered off around 8am when we got up. It still sprinkled a little bit while we had breakfast, but then it stopped and didn’t rain anymore on the trip. We had a slow lazy morning by the lake and me and Brandon improved our bear cache until it was acceptable. We packed up our day bags and set out on a hike around 11:30am. 

The trail continues on for miles and miles and there’s a lot of backcountry to explore. We decided to hike to Willow Lake, which is approximately 3.5km further along the trail. Brandon seemed keen to go all the way to Nightmare campsite, which is another 3.5km, but we wanted to swim in the lake again later and opted not to (plus, the name didn’t sound super appealing). 

Hozomeen Lake is definitely a much nicer campsite than Willow Lake, but it was a great spot to stop for lunch. If you push through some of the brush, you can walk out over the dried up flats to the edge of the lake. This may have only been possible because the water level in the lake was super low! We ate on the banks of the lake and it proved a great spot for watching wildlife. We saw tons of different birds, amphibians, and insects. 

Seth and Brandon spent most of the hike back trying to identify the forest plants and we arrived back at Hozomeen Lake around 3pm. The temperature of the lake is really nice – it’s cold, but not glacier fed – so we spent a lot of time in the water. We befriended the new campers, who were also from Vancouver, and we all marveled at how awesome the campsite is and how there’s so few people!

We ate dinner by the lake and then had a campfire at the fire ring. Always practice fire safety and only collect dead wood on the ground (don’t destroy any natural habitat). There was lots of blowdown for firewood, which is another indicator the site doesn’t get a lot of visitors. Sadie was absolutely pooped after 2 days of hiking and snoozed for most of the evening.

In the morning, we packed up to head home again. It’s an easier hike on the way back and we stopped at the overgrown frontcountry site to admire the view across Ross Lake. Ross Lake is currently super low and dry for the entire 2km of road walking, but the mountains across the lake are pretty. Our new friends told us there were bats living in one of the outhouses, so that was a cool side trip on the way back. 

It is a fairly long drive to get to Ross Lake, the worst part being an hour and half on gravel road from Hope to the lake. We stopped in Hope for ice cream and then weathered the long drive back on the highway with all the other long weekend warriors. But overall, we all absolutely loved this trip! It was much more chill than some of my other backpacking trips, with the lake and lack of crowds being the main highlights! I would definitely recommend!