I've heard that the northern Cascades are steep.
They're not that tall, nothing like the Sierra Nevada. The few really big peaks in the range gain dramatic impact by standing so far above the surrounding mountains. But what's there is steep, and, in a way, dense. Lots of compact mountains. Steep mountains with steep valleys.
Tracing their profile makes a pattern. Up, down, up, down, up down. Almost like the pattern a serious earthquake makes on a seismograph. Here's the elevation gain/loss profile for the PCT section we just hiked:
Up, down, up, down, up down. Over 19,000 cumulative feet of elevation gain in 70.9 miles. Spread over six days, that's an average of more than 3,000 feet of uphill every day (similar math applies to the downhill). And it takes a lot of switchbacks to gain and lose all that elevation. Here's a shot of a typical Halfmile map from this section, showing uh, just a few switchbacks:
"Ins" and "outs" too. Lots of wandering all over the map to avoid the most rugged, impenetrable ridges and peaks. Here's a photo of the same map showing almost two miles of travel to the southeast; travel made necessary by the Four Brothers and Chikamin Peak (southeast is not toward Canada, Canada is to the north):
This section, Washington Section "J," includes 70.9 miles of hiking from Snoqualmie Pass on Highway 90 to Stevens Pass on Highway 2. But those miles, trail miles, include so many switchbacks and so many ins and outs, that they move one a grand total of 28 air miles to the north. Here, I'll type out the number so it's clear that it's not a typo: the direct line distance from pass to pass is twenty eight miles. Yep, we made it 28 miles closer to Canada by hiking almost three times that far.
But who's complaining? These are just observations. It was a wonderful trip. One blessed by Californian-like weather, good health, incredible mountain scenery, a close up view of a bear, newly met friends, a sense of accomplishment, and a good serving of fun. But sometimes it seemed like we were walking on a seismograph.
Getting There:
We used to think it was a long drive to the PCT in San Diego County, California. Little did we know. Now it's a 14 hour drive to Seattle and more driving beyond.
This time we broke it into two days (staying in Medford - but next time maybe we'll go to Eugene, the University of Oregon town that we're already becoming fond of).
We also used to think that we were "almost there" when we got near a big, snowy 14,000 foot, northern California peak. But now, Mount Shasta isn't even halfway. These days it's Rainier we look for, telling us we're almost there:
Although we stayed in a motel in Medford, we didn't need one in the Snoqualmie area. Instead this master mudder put us up at his quiet, roomy house. Note the tent on the front lawn in the second shot - right in front of Dennis. Tricia's allergic to cats and so she slept on the front lawn (in very comfortable temperatures):
Unfortunately this host-mudder couldn't join us on our first hike (some lame work excuse about a "migration"). We enjoyed our visit though; I'd expected so much closer to suburbia than this away-from-the-bustle, comfortable location. We made the easy drive to Snoqualmie Pass in the morning.