Earning Altitude: North Cascades National Park
Armed with granola bars, a can of soup, hiking boots, and a healthy dose of naiveté, I set off from Seattle for North Cascades National Park. I know next to nothing about the park but- in a shocking twist to no one- this doesn’t slow me down in the slightest. What’s a day hike without a few catastrophically ill informed decisions?
I’m barely an hour outside of Seattle when I see the first snow capped peak. I made it!
More like made it out to be more than it really is. Turns out the little glacierette that I’ve been oohing and ahhing over for fifteen miles is actually just the backdrop for the local Citgo station. That’s right folks, even the gas stations up here come with snowcaps. Remind me again why I live on the east coast? If this is gas station scenery, what wonders does the park hold?
I don’t know why I’m always so surprised at the beauty of the National Parks. I know they’re going to be gorgeous but not knowing quite how they’ll be gorgeous means that I’m always dumbstruck when I see them. I’m practically drooling on myself by the time I get to the first scenic overlook. A man at the overlook is flying a drone high above the lake. The mechanical whir is out of place here but so are the power lines and the dam, both of which are responsible for powering Seattle. Fortunately, only a small section of the park is mechanized. The rest is wild.
I begin to feel guilty. I’m high in the mountains at this overpass, practically as high as the ice caps, but the only work I’ve done in the last two and a half hours has been to pump the gas pedal. This feels like cheating. I want to earn my views so I throw some provisions in my backpack and seek out a hiking path. For half an hour I follow a lakeside trail covered in leaves and pine needles, charmingly neglected in the winter months, but I’m just not feeling it. It’s too flat, too modest, too… easy. The next trail I attempt has two bridges that have been washed out by winter snows. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a good old fashioned river ford but I can’t see if the trail picks up on the other side and I only have one pair of socks. Feeling a little like Goldilocks, I head back to the parking lot where two park rangers are breaking up a slab of concrete. The park is set to officially open for the season in two days but the work has only just begun on trail maintenance and most of the summer crew hasn’t even arrived yet.
“Can you point me in the direction of something a little more strenuous than that lake path over there?” I ask.
“Yeah,” one of them says, wiping sweat from his brow, “You can pick up a sledgehammer right there and help us out!”
Lol. I meant something pointlessly strenuous, like hiking. Fortunately for me, it’s probably illegal to hand a sledgehammer to an unauthorized visitor and the rangers are all too happy to take a break from rock smashing to provide a detailed analysis of the park’s trails, ultimately recommending the Sourdough Mountain Trail. “It’s steep from start to finish,” one of the rangers says, “You’ll love it.”
And I do. I know I won’t have time to hike the whole 24-mile trail but I hike fast and I’m pretty sure I can get up to glacier height from lake level in three hours. My mind is focused, my legs are strong, and the air smells of pine and earth. Everything is perfect!
Except for the fact that the trees won’t stay still. They ebb and flow in front of my eyes like a forest tidal pool. I stop for a few seconds to let the trees right themselves, shake my head, and hike on. Twenty feet further up the trail they’re moving around again and I feel a little nauseous. I stop again, which is two more stops than I usually make on a hike. Twenty more feet and my heart is racing like it was two hundred feet. I stop and put my head between my knees to restore a little blood flow but as I slowly raise my head the trees are spinning more than ever. I feel like I’m playing the level of Yoshi’s Island where Yoshi gets high on dandelion puffs only I think I might throw up for real.
I rack my brain trying to remember the symptoms of altitude sickness. Nausea… Loss of appetite… Other stuff… I make a deal with myself, as I often do while hiking: twenty seconds of exercise, ten seconds of rest. It’s Tabata hiking. The system works pretty well and I’m climbing at a reasonable pace but the symptoms refuse to abate. An hour up I’m seriously overheated. I roll up my pants and take off my shirt. There’s no one else on the trail and even if there were I’d make a fierce case for topless gender equality.
I climb higher and higher until I reach the first snow drift on the trail. It’s full of pine needles and dirt but it’s cold and wet and I fall to my knees to pack a huge snowball, slowly letting it melt across my arms, neck, back, and chest. It helps. I pack another and hike on. I’ve officially made it to glacier level and the trail is now almost 100% packed snow. Across the valley is a gigantic ice sheet with six waterfalls flowing from it. I have most definitely earned this altitude.
I don’t really remember the descent but when I make it back to my car, which is parked in the shade and is far cooler than the temperature on the mountain, the thermometer reads 91 degrees. WTMF kind of ice mountains reach temperatures in the 90s in early May?!
I’m all out of granola bars at this point so I stop by a general store on the way home for a can opener to open the can of soup I brought with me. The woman at the register is apologetic but she has no can openers for sale. “Oh! Wait!” She says. “I have one in my drawer!” She hands me the flimsiest, most weak ass can opener I’ve ever seen in my life. “Um, thanks, I’ll be right back,” I say. I go out to my car and try to de-lid my soup can. All I manage to do is poke a few painfully wrought holes in the lid through which I can suck lentil flavored droplets at a rate of one every fifteen seconds. Dejected and dehydrated, I return the can opener and buy a bottle of blue gatorade and a pack of blueberry pop tarts.
As I pull out of the general store storm clouds begin rolling in, treating me to a dramatic thunderstorm on the drive back to Seattle. Which makes this my first… second… third… fourth… fifth… sixth… seventh NPS thunderstorm experience this year! Oh! And did I mention I stepped on a snake today? Yeah, that happened…
