I don’t do a lot of hiking in Washington, but I make a point of trying to go there at least once every year in the Fall to hike near Mount Baker. I’ve read that North Cascades National Park is one of the lesser visited parks in America, which is a shame because it’s a really beautiful place! Mount Baker is technically outside of the park, but it is in the Snoqualmie National Forest/Mount Baker Wilderness Area. It’s approximately 2 hours from Vancouver, so it’s really accessible and it is absolutely gorgeous in the Fall!

Brandon and I go on an annual Thanksgiving Day (Canadian) hike every year and this year we decided to do the Ptarmigan Ridge hike, which leaves from the Mount Baker ski area. My first hike in this area was in 2018 and I hadn’t been back to this specific parking lot since pre-pandemic. It’s wild how much more popular the area is now than 5 years ago! The most popular trail is to Artist Point, which is a small lookout at the top of the pass. In the summer, you can drive all the way up to the parking lot at the top of the pass, and from there it’s a short hike to the summit. However, when it starts to snow, they close the gate and you have to hike an additional 3km each way to get to the parking lot.

I’ve never been to Mount Baker when the gate has been open, so it was a great surprise to arrive and discover that we could save 6km of hiking by parking at the upper lot. You do need a day pass to park here, which you can get in advance online, at the Visitor Centre, or in the parking lot (at the base of the ski hill only, for other hikes you’ll have to utilize one of the other options). It’s $5USD for the entire car, so it’s very reasonably priced. 

The Ptarmigan Ridge hike starts from the upper lot (or add on 3km each way from the lower lot) and follows the ridgeline all the way to the East Portal, which is basically as far up the slope of Mount Baker as you can climb before you hit glacier travel. It’s a long trail, 25km round trip if you hike from the lower lot, and it was early October, so we had limited daylight. We weren’t planning to hike the entire trail, we just planned to hike along the ridge until we got tired or had to turn around for daylight reasons. But by skipping the trail from the lower lot, we were able to cut out a lot of elevation gain and ended up doing the entire trail!

I was with my friends Brandon and Simmer; it was a beautiful sunny day and we were all in awe of the gorgeous landscapes. The entire trail is in the alpine, so you have incredible views along the entire 19km of trail. There is a fair bit of elevation gain (~500m), but it’s a pretty gentle slope until just before the Portals, so it was a very enjoyable hike. 

The trail starts from the parking lot and shares a trailhead with the Chain Lakes Loop. I did this hike with Lien and Emily a few years ago and it’s another super scenic trail. It was really busy, but I think more people were doing Chain Lakes rather than Ptarmigan Ridge. Chain Lakes is a much shorter hike and it’s a loop, so you don’t have to re-do any terrain. The Chain Lakes trail passes through the lower lot, so it’s a good one to do when the gate is closed because you have to hike the 3km between parking lots either way. If the gate is open, do Ptarmigan Ridge. 

I recommend doing both of these trails in the Fall because they are both completely exposed. It’s a gorgeous hike, but I can’t imagine how hot it would be in the dead of summer because there’s very little shade on either hike. 

The trails start together and cut across the bowl on the back of Table Mountain. Once you circle around the mountain, they branch and Chain Lakes continues around the rest of Table Mountain, while Ptarmigan Ridge heads towards Mount Baker. Ptarmigan Ridge starts with a downhill section, and then you spend the rest of the day climbing. Like I said, there are views the entire way, but you basically follow the ridge from point to point and there’s a few really nice places to stop along the way. 

We were making good time, so we decided to just keep pushing. The closer we got to the end of the trail, the more we wanted to reach the end, but we were also getting very hungry. There’s a wilderness site called Camp Kiser just before the Portals and we decided to stop there for lunch. It’s a steep climb up to the Portals, so we weren’t intending to do that part. 

Simmer hiked a huge container of homemade butter chicken up the mountain, so we shared a really nice lunch on the side of Mount Baker, admiring the glacial views along the foothills. The problem was that we were staring up at the Portals the entire time we were eating and the longer I looked at it, the more I wanted to climb it. So we decided to shorten the break and we all trekked uphill for another half hour to reach the top. I’m so glad we did because the view of the glacier was absolutely phenomenal and I felt really accomplished when we summited. 

The hike back was relatively uneventful. It was 19km of hiking, so it was a pretty aggressive hike for October. We started around 10:30am and were hiking for ~7.5 hours including our lunch break. It was faster on the way back and we were ahead of the fading light, but we definitely had tired feet on the way back. I would probably have preferred to start the hike a little bit earlier. But we had the Portals viewpoint all to ourselves, so timing wise, it all worked out. There is a small lake where you can camp off trail around the three quarter point, so I’d definitely be interested to return in the future to spend the night. 

I always have a great time when I go to the Mount Baker Wilderness Area and this hike was no exception! It’s a big day and I recommend the Fall season, but definitely a hike worth adding to your bucket list!