Hiking Ptarmigan Ridge

January 2, 2025December 17, 2024 / Maria / 3 Comments

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!

Hozomeen Lake Backpacking Trip

July 24, 2024April 10, 2025 / Maria / 6 Comments

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!

Ski Resort Series: Stevens Pass

March 1, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you might recall that every year my friends go on a big long weekend ski trip to one of the local resorts. To date we’ve been to Big White, Sun Peaks, Silver Star, Apex, and Mount Washington. But even though we go every year, unsurprisingly we missed a few due to covid over the past few years. We’ve been really keen to resurrect the trip, but it is a lot of planning and Karen and Grant have since moved back to Newfoundland, so it was hard to find the inspiration.

I was convinced to buy the 5 day pass for Whistler this year because it was really good value. I knew it would be a struggle to use all the days, so a bit of research revealed that we can use the pass across the border at Stevens Pass in Washington! I’d never even heard of this mountain before, but it turns out it’s the place to ski if you’re in Seattle, so we decided to make a long weekend of it and drive 3 hours down for a few days. We downsized the trip for ease of planning, but there were still 8 of us that headed across the border on Friday for the weekend in late January.

It’s not that far of a drive, but it can definitely chew up a chunk of time. Me and Seth crossed at truck crossing and didn’t have too much trouble, but Megan and Nick crossed at Peace Arch and ended up stuck at the border for over 2 hours. Then we had to make a grocery stop at Trader Joes (which was a lot of fun I admit) since bringing groceries across the border is complicated. Then finally, we hit traffic coming from Seattle on the way into the mountains. So it ended up taking most of us between 4-6 hours, depending on our success at the border. So I wouldn’t recommend it for a day trip.

We booked an AirBnB in Index, which is about 30 minutes before the ski resort. It was a gated community, so it made for a very confusing turn-off in the dark, but was a beautiful house right on the river. We had a fully stocked kitchen, fireplace, and 4 bedrooms. We decided to take Sadie with us, which ended up actually being a lot less nerve-wracking than I expected. I thought it would be hard to cross the border with her, but none of the border agents really had any interest in her and no one asked to see her vaccination record (which is required to cross).

We had a fun first night celebrating the lunar new year with bai tai’s and raclette and playing the AirBnB’s old school nintendo! On Saturday we drove out to the ski resort and had a full day to explore the runs. A word of warning, visiting Stevens Pass definitely requires some pre-planning and coordination if you want to be successful. They do sell out of passes (one friend ended up bailing on the trip when passes sold out), so make sure to get them in advance if you want to be guaranteed to be able to ski. Fortunately half of us were using our Whistler passes, so all we had to do was show up.

Parking was also a challenge though. I drove up with Brandon and he pretty much got the last spot in the main lot on Saturday. Carolyn and Steve had to park further down the highway and take a shuttle to the resort. What’s worse though is that Carolyn and Steve tried to go back again on Sunday (they were the only ones) and by the time they arrived, there wasn’t actually any parking available and they were forced to take a refund on their lift passes and leave. So even if you do buy the lift ticket in advance, you could still drive up there and get turned away, so go early!

The weather was a bit touch and go. It was lovely when we arrived and the sun was shining, but the mountain got caught up in a cloud for most of the day and the snow kept coming and going. That said, it’s a nice little mountain. I was expecting long line ups because of the parking situation, but the mountain never felt crowded. There’s one lift (Hogsback Express) that’s a bit more popular than the others and has longer lines, but for the most part we didn’t have to wait too long. Plus, the resort is open until 10pm, so there’s lots of time to get your runs in.

We started the day on Skyline Express and gradually explored as many of the lifts as possible. We didn’t bother with 7th Heaven, which was stuck in the clouds and was all double blacks, but we hit almost all the others. I did like Hogsback Express, but Tye Mill and the back side of the mountain were probably my favourite. There’s a few nice runs right along the Tye Mill lift, but the backside was really the best runs. There’s a lot of terrain to explore back there and very limited people. We skied down the transmission line first and then went exploring some of the other runs. The backside isn’t open very late though, so I’d recommend going there early. We got hungry after a few runs over there and left for lunch and then it was closed when we returned.

Brooks Express has a few nice runs as well and we finished the day with one run on Kehr’s Chair. One run on this one was enough for me as it’s pretty much the most terrifying chairlift I’ve ever been on! It’s a two seater chair, but it doesn’t have a safety bar and has really low side rails, so I was basically clinging on to the bar in the middle of the chair for dear life. Great for thrills seekers, but I wouldn’t take a child on it!

Seth couldn’t join me for skiing because we didn’t want to leave Sadie alone at the AirBnB, so him and Lien ended up taking her snowshoeing. We all stayed in for supper and spent the rest of the evening playing some games and learning to line dance. Yes, you read that right. Megan and Nick are getting married in Alberta this summer and they’re determined to get the party started at the reception with group line dancing, so every time I see Megan these days she teaches me a new line dance and we got some really quality instruction on the trip.

Sunday was pretty low key. We slept in and packed up before slowly making our way back home. Me and Seth stopped in Fairhaven and visited the beach with Sadie for lunch, but it was very windy and cold, so it was pretty short lived. Megan told me about an awesome bookstore called Village Books, so I made a quick visit there, but couldn’t give it the full attention it deserved because of Sadie.

We decided to cross in Aldergrove to avoid border traffic at Peace Arch and crossed the border in less than 5 minutes. So it was a much faster drive home and we had plenty of time to decompress from the trip. It’s the shortest ski trip we’ve done (we’ve always go for 3 nights and this was the first time we only did 2), but it was also more low key and easier to plan than previous trips. I would have loved to ski the second day, but mostly it was nice to get away with friends and re-visit some of the magic of pre-covid times. I would definitely return!