The story is juxtaposed with my first climb of Mount Shuksan in the early 1980s. The following excerpt is from my latest book called Boots on Fire, expected to be out to the world sometime in April. I’ll post more about the book soon, although you can also find a short blurb at tireddogspress.com. Enjoy!

Alan and I found that we were both quite interested in testing our mettle on Mount Shuksan, one of the most elegant great peaks of the North Cascades. If not for Mount Baker, Shuksan would probably be the grand monarch of the northern region. For both of us it would be our first attempt on the 9,125-foot-high mountain.

Shuksan truly epitomizes the beauty of the North Cascades and is reputedly one of the most photographed mountains in the world. The name is thought to have been derived from a Nooksack Indian term for “roaring mountain.” If I had to guess, I’d say it might have something to do with the occasional avalanches coming off the glaciers. “Roaring mountain” could almost serve as a metaphor for the long battle to protect both mountains, Shuksan and Baker, within a national park.

The first confirmed climb of the peak was in 1906 from the south by way of the Sulphide Glacier. From the late 1800s, the spectacular beauty of the alpine country from Mount Shuksan to Mount Baker had excited tourism promoters around the region. In 1911, the nascent Mount Baker Club of Bellingham initiated a legendary runners’ marathon from downtown to the summit of Baker and back. Lanky competitors in shorts, skivvies and t-shirts literally ran up miles of wilderness trails, steep snow and dangerous crevassed glaciers to the highest point, known as Grant Peak, before running back down. Judges were stationed at the summit and elsewhere to keep the contestants honest.

The Mount Baker Marathon is very nicely reenacted in the award-winning 2012 documentary Mountain Runners. Following a third run in 1913, the race was discontinued after one runner fell into a deep crevasse and nearly died. Almost every year since 1973, Bellingham’s Ski-to-Sea race has emulated the excitement of a human-powered, mountains-to-the-sea competition beginning at the foot of Mount Shuksan, but without the risk of falling into an icy chasm. The event also provides thousands of Bellinghamsters and visitors with a hell of an excuse for a town-sized party.

In 1916, Portland’s mountaineering club, the Mazamas, along with the Mount Baker Club, began to lobby Congress for the creation of a new Mount Baker National Park. Both groups had organized many climbs of Mount Shuksan and Mount Baker, as well as other peaks in the region. The meadowland between the Easton and Deming Glaciers is known as Mazama Park, the club from Portland being among its earliest explorers.

The park idea was a grand vision nearly realized. The proposal included Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan as well as a vast area of wilderness south of the Canadian border and all the way east to the Picket Range. The Mount Baker Club’s Charles Finley Easton was a leading advocate. He assembled an impressive scrapbook of photos, maps and documents that made a convincing case for a new park.

Easton’s wrangling ultimately enlisted the support of Enos Mills and the American Civic Association, which was dedicated to the creation of new parks around the country. Mills was also the man most credited with winning the creation of Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915.

Easton and Mills both lobbied Bellingham’s local Congressman, Lindley Hadley, a Republican, to move the proposal forward in Congress. Mills wrote to Lindley, “Mount Baker never fails to impress the traveler. Its forested base thrusting up with a splendidly white and massive summit [that] stands distinctly in the sky. A ‘noble mountain’ is what John Muir calls it.” Penning a few more superlatives, Mills added, “It is a natural and vast landscape garden of unexcelled magnificence.”

Indeed, John Muir had taken note of Mount Baker during a passage through the Strait of Juan de Fuca around 1889:

Olympic Mountains close at hand on the right, Vancouver Island on the left, and the snowy peak of Mount Baker straight ahead in the distance. During calm weather, or when the clouds are lifting and rolling off the mountains after a storm, all these views are truly magnificent. Mount Baker is one of that wonderful series of old volcanoes that once flamed along the summits of the Sierras and Cascades from Lassen to Mount St. Elias. Its fires are sleeping now, and it is loaded with glaciers, streams of ice having taken the place of streams of glowing lava.

Congressman Hadley joined the Mount Baker Club in briefly exploring the area and was sold on the idea. He introduced the bill in Congress that was needed to create the park. Stephen Mather of the fledgling National Park Service was initially supportive of the park proposal, then oddly enough, opposed it, believing it would duplicate, if not diminish, the prominence of Mount Rainier National Park as a revered national treasure.

However, the proposal did gain some traction in Congress and might have succeeded if not for the U.S. entering the Great War in 1917. World events overshadowed the towering, ice-clad volcano and the momentum for Mount Baker National Park was lost. For his efforts toward creating a park and for his long service in Congress, the highest crag along Chowder Ridge was named Hadley Peak. It’s the nearest named summit north of the volcano.

In the 1920s, a road was constructed to Heather Meadows and Austin Pass, accommodating a new ski resort and the luxuriously rustic Mount Baker Lodge. Sadly, the lodge burned to the ground not even five years into service. A major downhill ski area, however, still thrives near Heather Meadows. In summer, visually sunning trails lead off in all directions, with mighty Mount Shuksan dominating the backdrop.

Shuksan appears in some of the not-so-high-minded scenes in the 1935 movie classic, The Call of the Wild, and briefly in the brutal 1978 film, The Deer Hunter. In the latter, a long scene with Mount Baker behind the actors (allegedly in western Pennsylvania) clearly shows the terminus of the Lower Coleman Glacier far below where it is today, a stark indicator of the ongoing effects of climate change.

Through the early and mid-1960s, pressure from park and wilderness advocates renewed the campaign for a park, which led to formation of a North Cascades Study Team between the National Park Service, who once again supported a large park, and a U.S. Forest Service who actively opposed it, siding instead with anti-park timber and mining interests. Ultimately the Forest Service was forced by the White House to play ball, though the two federal entities bickered over what to include in any new park or wilderness area, and where exactly to place the boundaries. On the citizen side of the ledger, the North Cascades Conservation Council can be credited with building the groundswell of public support needed for success.

The 1960s Park Service also believed Mount Baker, the highest mountain in the North Cascades, belonged inside the park. Others argued that the boundary should be farther east where the timber was harder to reach, excluding even Mount Shuksan. The compromise passed by Congress in 1968 landed with the Mount Baker area excluded and a simple rectangle drawn around Shuksan.

The result was a map with an odd-looking appendage protruding from the rest of the park lying farther east. What this means on the ground is that when looking east toward Shuksan from Heather Meadows, the park boundary is more than two miles away and all but inaccessible to the non-mountaineers among us. It was an unfortunate compromise with little practical benefit for the recreating public.

All was not lost, however. The 1984 Washington Wilderness Act that established the Mount Baker Wilderness included within its bounds much of the area between the national park and the ski area. Namely, the high meadowy ridge known as Shuksan Arm.

Alan and I began our climbing adventure at Austin Pass, which lies at the base of Shuksan Arm not far above Heather Meadows. Feeling strong and having researched the usual route up the Fisher Chimneys, we figured we could knock out the climb in a long day.

The chimneys route was pioneered by Clarence “Happy” Fisher in 1927. Beckey’s guide called it “a clever and tortuous route” with “stimulating route finding.” At the time, Happy Fisher was a Bellingham teacher, a competent local climber and leader of the Mount Baker Club. He was also with the party that in December 1925 made the first winter ascent of Mount Baker.

We hit the trail just after 5:00 a.m. Almost at a trot, we passed Lake Ann in an hour, a thrifty four-mile-per-hour pace. We found our way to the base of the chimneys, gaining about 400 feet to reach the official park boundary about a mile above sea level. We spotted a couple of parties ahead of us. One group we passed at the margin of the White Salmon Glacier where climbers, us included, normally strap on the crampons and rope up.

We kept our bullish pace going across the Upper Curtis Glacier and up and around a snowy ramp called Hells Highway. From there, the Sulphide Glacier led to the rocky, 600-foot-high summit pyramid that’s so conspicuous from afar. Beckey’s guidebook mentioned a “sporting” alternative up the southeast corner that was rated Class 3 or 4. We’d made such good time, we decided to give it a try. With a running belay weaving in and out of rock horns, we danced upwardly while gazing straight down the headwall of the sprawling Crystal Glacier.

Energized by the views, we were up the ridge in no time and on the summit by 10:00 a.m. Despite our fairly quick ascent, I’m sure we didn’t set any records. Nevertheless, our two sets of mountain boots were clearly on fire for this one. After a good break admiring the endless streams of craggy mountains in all directions, we headed down the pyramid, then the glaciers, Hap Fisher’s chimneys, and were back home in time for dinner.

Coming soon!

For those who might live and hike elsewhere, these counties contain the fabulous hiking grounds from north of Seattle to the Canadian border, and from the Salish Sea to the crest of the Cascade Range. To be sure, Skagit is no less appetizing than the others. Some years ago I started a guide to its tasty innards, but then set it aside for so long that the work became too stale to ingest. It had to be composted.

So I thought to myself, somebody should do something. And myself looked back at me and said, “Hey, who you lookin’ at?”

Thus I’ve begun anew and hope to have the work completed in time for trudging up mountains next summer. Then, once having completed my sandwich, readers can chew on it freely, or just let it lie on the shelf, as orphaned and alone as a dangling modifier.

This comprehensive county-by-county approach, if you’re curious, kinda happened organically. It was way back when the first Whatcom book emerged in the late 1980s after an obviously unhinged coworker had said, “Hey, you know all the trails around here, you should write a book,” and blah, blah, blah, here we are. I’m still amazed that scrappy little thing has stuck around this long, with a few upgrades, of course.

And of course, not all counties in the world are so fortuitously blessed with the amazing geography that lures us Northwesterners to get our butts outside on a regular basis. Except when it’s cold and rainy and we are duty-bound to stay indoors and watch sports or play with our phones. By “indoors,” we mean the local brewpub. Duh.

Tending three guides to my immediate neighborhood has kept me plenty busy over the years with updates and all. Adding a fourth means more “fieldwork,” but we’ll just have to make the sacrifice. I’ve pasted one of the shorter hikes below, and will post more in the coming months. In the meantime, you can always find the others online (this is a plug) at TiredDogsPress.com.

As with the other books, I’m always excited to find new stuff, new trails, new vistas, new whatzes-around-the-next-bend, and new encounters with wild things, especially those lacking nasty claws and pointy maxillary canines. I’ve learned that it also pays to check out the small stuff that’s right there staring at you from the bend you are currently rounding.

Like the maple tree on Whidbey Island that seemed to have sprouted from two stumps. Huh? Erratic boulders the size of cars and houses randomly deposited by glaciers thousands of years ago. The wide eyes of a silent owl staring at your sandwich. When I’m not looking, who knows how many mountain lions have watched me skitter by obliviously?

While out hiking on Mount Erie with Kris recently and conducting said fieldwork for the new book, we paused for a moment noticing a couple of mushrooms stuck to a tree. Aw, isn’t that cute! Somebody tucked them in a dead tree behind some flaking bark. When I moved in closer for a photo, it was clear these guys were actually living there, like kangaroo babies, or more correctly “joeys,” in their cuddly little pouch. Had we discovered the first marsupial subspecies of the red alder tree? It appeared so. The evolutionary sequence is sure to baffle joey biologists everywhere.

The encounter reminded me of a bad joke I made up several years ago that I was sure would go viral:

A couple of fungi walk into a bar. And then walk out. Why? Because there wasn’t mush-room.

Ha-ha. Please laugh, thank you.

As for the preview, Kris and I were in Skagit today checking out a fun little trail two miles southeast of downtown Mount Vernon. Called the Maddox Creek Trail, it has it all, including big views, pretty forest, stairs and open-water wetlands. Several short loops total 1.5 miles if you do all the connectors like we did. A great leg-stretcher when you just want to burn an hour or so.

To find the trailhead from I-5 at Kincaid St, head up the hill on Broad St, turn right on 16th St, then left on Section St. In just under a mile, turn right on Maddox Creek Rd. The trail is just ahead. Park on the street and either head up the paved path on the left or the gravel path to the right, which is the easy way to the wetlands.

For the longer clockwise loop, hike the paved stretch above the street. It becomes quite steep for 100 yards before reaching a couple of benches with big views. Notice the spur on the right. Take that to another street, jog left then right to continue on the paved path. This leads to a cul-de-sac, more path and steps leading down into a forested ravine (photo below) and eventually to the wetlands. A couple of gravel paths will take you back up an easy hill to the start.

If you’re tempted, Vancouver Trails is a pretty good source for maps and info on hikes around the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.

Happy fall footstering!

I will mention, however, one of the better known gentlemen who resided at Northern State for a time, Northwest author-journalist John Patric (1902-1985). There’s a fascinating Wikipedia entry for him that quickly had me recalling the rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy in Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

At its peak, the hospital housed more than two thousand patients, finally closing in 1973 during a period of public skepticism over the institutional treatment of those in need of emotional or psychiatric support. Even lobotomies were not out of the question. The facility also included extensive farmland and was largely self sufficient. In fact, it’s the 726 acres of farmland acquired by Skagit County in 1991 that is now accessible to the public as a major regional park. A simple search online for the Northern State Recreation Area will get you some added details and directions.

If you haven’t been to Northern State, it’s well worth a visit. You can walk or casually bike the many excellent trails, often built by volunteers, and explore the century-old architecture preserved at the site, some of it restored, some vandalized or in ruins. Interpretive signs are found within the historic core of the complex.

From the main parking area and veterans memorial plaza on Helmick Road, the old buildings are easy to find. The trailhead kiosk includes some brief history and a good map of the trail system, with squeaky-clean restrooms close by. If a suggestion helps for a good walk, we especially enjoyed the North Knob-Pumphouse Trail loop.

We met Bud and Amanda at the boat in Anacortes for a quick sail (actually motor) out to a group of nearby islands: Hat, Dot, Saddlebag and Huckleberry. The group is huddled in an arc just off the southeast shore of Guemes Island. The San Juan 28 had been docked for way too long and it was well past time to unhitch and check things out for a more ambitious cruise, hopefully soon. Between forays to the mountains, I’d been working on various repairs, maintenance, cleaning this and that. The old boat was finally ready to depart the dock at Cap Sante Marina for a mini-shakedown on a bright blue morning.

Prechecks complete, we donned our PFDs and turned the key. Rrrhh-rrrhh-rrrhh-rrrhh-rrrhh-pop-bang-phfft-bang-zzz. Rrrhh-rrrhh-rrrhh-rrrhh. What the heck? The little Yanmar diesel had always been quick to light up, a hundred-ten percent reliable. I tried again. Rrrhh-rrrhh-rrrhh-pop-bang. A puff of black smoke. Aha! Must be flooded. I backed off the throttle and cranked it again. Rrrhh-rrrhh-rrrhh-pop-pop-bang-bang-purrrrrrrrr—and we were off!

Clear of the marina, we bobbed along eastward in a brisky breeze and light chop. First up was a closer look at Hat Island. We wondered what might have inspired the name. Seems it could just as well be named Fir-Ball for all the bushy trees or Mammalback with its smooth profile vaguely resembling a seal lying on a rock. Apologies if there’s a romantic (or harrowing) story out there undergirding the placename.

Managed by the Washington Department of Natural Resources, Hat’s 91 acres are a designated Conservation Area. There are no facilities on the island, and reports are that you can pretty much see it all from the water, thus there’s really no need to go ashore. It wasn’t like we had a choice, since we’d left the dinghy at the dock. We let the critters enjoy it undisturbed.

Coursing a little to port, we approached then passed aptly named Dot. It’s more than a rock, but if you blink you’ll miss it. It too is reserved for the critters. Next to that is Saddlebag, its coastline similar to the outline of a slightly misshapen cowpoke’s saddlebag laid flat on the ground. I kayaked here once some years ago. The island is a marine state park with a short trail and several campsites that make it a bit more visitor friendly. A couple of boats were anchored off the south shore, sheltered from the chop and enjoying their moment of bliss. Imprinted in my head now is that I’m long overdue for another fair-weather paddle to these easy-to-reach islands.

Saddlebag, I should note, is also within the 11,000-acre Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, mostly comprised of the bay’s sprawling, intertidal, habitat-rich marinescape. In other words, endless mudflats from here to the eastern mainland when the tide goes out.

A couple of years ago, while cruising down from Bellingham on the San Juan 28, we dropped the sails just off Saddlebag’s northwest cusp. Drifting along peacefully in 200 feet of water, we scarfed some lunch and chatted. That is, until we were rudely interrupted by the boat’s shallow-water alarm. We suddenly had barely a fathom of sea below the keel. The current had clandestinely carried us too close to said cusp where the deeper water abruptly ends. So who’s watching the GPS? Uh, that would be me. While Keith raised the sail I cranked the engine, and together we got out of there in the nick of time. A useful lesson in the ancient art of keeping your boat out of the mud and off the rocks.

We motored on to Huckleberry, passing just a stone’s throw from its near-vertical shore. Once again, the depth registered at more than 200 feet—a veritable underwater precipice. We spotted a porpoise perhaps catching some lunch in the upwelling current. I wondered about the island’s fruity name as we circled around. A small beach beckoned and might have offered an answer, but with no dinghy in tow the mystery would carry on. We completed our lazy encirclement and headed back to Anacortes.

As we crossed the wide entrance to Guemes Channel, Bud pointed out an old amphitheater up ahead, perched on the hillside north of the rocky point known as Cap Sante. Beginning in the 1930s, spectators would gather there to watch boat races and other events. We couldn’t actually see it from afar, but we learned that a trail in Anacortes would take us there.

Too soon we were back at the marina pulling into the slip, pleased with our successful little shakedown. We bid our friends farewell, tidied things up and scampered up the ramp. Kris dropped me at the bottom of the trail leading up to the nearby Cap Sante overlook and drove on up to meet me. The short hike (or drive) leads to splendid view of Anacortes and the marina to the west, as well as the broad bay and islands to the east, including the course we had just enjoyed.

Kris spotted an interpretive sign with a map showing the trail leading down to the amphitheater, more correctly known as the Marine Stadium. Constructed in 1938, the rocky venue operated for two decades, essentially offering grandstand seating on stone benches for spectators attending the “Marineers Pageant.” The city describes the big event thusly:

Beginning in 1937 the town hosted thousands of tourists who were attracted by parades, events and zany contests. Following the pageant's successful first year, volunteer and Works Progress Administration (WPA) laborers constructed, in 1938, an amphitheater on the east side of Cap Sante, referred to as the Marine Stadium. Benches were structured of rock, and held an audience of hundreds of people gathered to watch water sports, acrobatic skiers and hydroplane races.

We hiked down the short trail and easily found the site of the old stadium. Rows upon rows of stone seating filled the forest like a prehistoric ruin. Long benches disappeared into the brush. Trees had grown up among them, somewhat obscuring what must have been a fabulous view of the exciting times on the water. The stadium appeared to be in great condition, solid as a rock, to borrow a term. Maybe someday it can attract a pageant anew and recover some of that prior glory.

Kris and I returned to Bellingham, but our day on the water was not yet over. That evening, we loaded the double kayak onto the old Datsun pickup, affectionately known as “Trusty Rusty.” We laid rubber and squealed around corners to reach the beach at Marine Park, arriving just after sunset. Our objective: to see the bioluminescence in the bay while the weather is still warm and clear. And there was a new moon to boot.

It is written by the elders of the Port of Bellingham that Marine Park doth close at dusk. But when I looked around at the nearly full parking lot and all the people loitering along the beach after sunset, I took it as an indication that said elders may be in a more forgiving mood than usual and that we could probably just leave the truck in the parking lot without triggering a citation or some other penalty for violating the closed-at-dusk thing. Who the hell even knows when dusk begins anyway? I figured we should at least be back by astrological twilight, and therefore did not pull the truck out past the gate where abundant evening parking was still available.

In civil twilight, we paddled south along the shore, the water as calm as table top, ruffled only by the occasional wake of a distant boat. Our eyes adjusted to the darkening sky as the sun’s glow receded in the west and the first stars appeared. A gentle slosh on the rocks was all that broke the evening’s silence. The darkening darkened some more. Pupils dilated.

And then, there it was! The paddles were turning up a lighter, whiter bubbliness than a few minutes before. Could it be? We ran our fingers through the water and yes, it be! The trails from our fingertips lit up with a faint blue glow that seemed to brighten by the moment. The light danced off our fingers, the paddles, the dripping droplets creating a splash of light as they splattered. We slowly drifted along noticing the light’s intensity ebbed and flowed, from dull to almost electric.

Kris also noticed that the water even sparkled in her hands. When she dribbled water on the bottom of the boat, it too would sparkle. I tried the same, dribbling water all over my shorts, but the sparkles did last for a second or more, like stationary fireflies. I’d witnessed the bioluminescence from a kayak in the past, but somehow never noticed that the spakles would linger like that.

We passed a few other nighttime paddlers with similar ideas, equally jazzed by these weird little phenomena of the natural world. The warm evening, the gentle bobbing along, and the blue-white light of microscopic plankton pretending to be fireflies, made the time slip away—into and beyond, well, astronomical twilight. It was time to head back to the park, although I think Kris would have happily continued on to the Mexican Baja.

Back at the beach, people were still frolicking, some swimming or paddling wakeboards, others just sitting in the warm air and starlight. As we hauled the kayak up onto the shore, I could see the parking lot had completely emptied out, with the lone exception of a Datsun pickup. Oh gee, lookie there. There’s a note on the windshield. Busted. We loaded the boat and accoutrements and proceeded to the gate, which of course was locked. The note said we’d best call a certain number if we wished to be set free. I called and the extra-friendly security guy said he’d be right over.

So we, or more precisely I, boobooed thinking we could fudge the rules a little on such a primo summer night and leave the truck in the park. Moral of the story: don’t be a dunce like me. Heed the signs. But do get out there and enjoy our splendiferous Salish Sea.

By the way, my smartphone could not capture the blue light, but you can easily search online for some decent video clips of the Salish Sea’s summer night’s magic.

By the way, major themes along the Stevens Pass Greenway include wilderness, waterfalls and railroads—an odd compilation perhaps. The latter, choo-choo trains, the Great Northern R/R in particular, present an exceedingly rich history along the corridor. If that’s your interest, don’t miss the stops at the historic railroad town of Skykomish, with a museum and free mini-train ride on Saturdays in summer; or the Iron Goat Trailhead at Scenic, where a short, steep hike leads to the historic GNRR grade at Windy Point. Near Stevens Pass, watch for the old highway to Wellington (access westbound), also part of the Iron Goat Trail, and the 1910 site of the worst avalanche disaster in U.S. history.

On a happier note, the big view from Frog Mountain northeast of Index is a celebration of both wilderness and volunteer spirit. The trail was completed in 2023 after thousands of hours of effort by countless volunteers.

Here’s the article in SnohomishTalk.

Sheepishly (goatishly?), I’ll admit this was my first-ever escapade to the Rocks of Goat. Not sure how I missed it all these years. Thanks to Rod and Rick for making it happen! If you go, be warned it’s a popular place, so go on a weekday if possible. For the record, we saw zero goats and one fearless marmot.

The event was organized by the Issaquah Alps Trails Club and was held next to the larger-than-life Harvey-on-a-rock statue downtown. If you love trails and wilderness, steer your buggy off I-90 next time you pass through, then take a look at Harv’s likeness and say thanks for all the good work he did. And you may as well enjoy a hike in the Alps while you’re at it, and maybe a dinner out to soak up some of that salubrious Issaquah vibe. (For the statue, GPS yourself to the Issaquah Community Center and walk a block north on the wide path.)

I was lucky enough to know Harvey and work with him on a variety of park and wilderness issues over two decades, mostly in connection with the North Cascades Conservation Council (NCCC). I first met Harvey at a trails conference in Seattle in the early 1980s. I was a pretty avid hiker and climber already and knew his books well.

At the conference, I noticed over in a quiet corner, a man was sitting alone at a round table with a few empty chairs. On second glance I realized it was Harvey, arms folded, wearing his trademark hat, and those unmistakable, dark-rimmed glasses. I sheepishly wandered over and sat down, utterly clueless how to converse with the guru himself. Lucky for me, he had no problem doing most of the talking. I might have spoken ten words, but he engaged nonetheless, smiling gently behind a whitening beard.

Harvey had already been a longtime member of the board of the NCCC when I joined around 1984. I’d been active with a Bellingham group advocating (against all odds) for a new wilderness area around Mount Baker. Somebody got wind of it, and because they needed somebody on the board from “up north” I was invited to join. I was still a newbie at this saving-the-wilderness thing, but I loved the idea of it and was flattered to be asked.

The infrequent meetings would take place in someone’s living room, me the inadequate stranger among not only Washington’s conservation heavyweights—Pat Goldsworthy, Poly Dyer, Phil and Laura Zalesky and others—but also on occasion by the late-great Dave Brower, former Executive Director of the Sierra Club and the primary protagonist in John McPhee’s preservation-versus-development eco-page-turner Encounters with the Archdruid (1971). Brower was also among those who were central to the creation of North Cascades National Park.

Brower’s 31-minute film, Wilderness Alps of Stehekin (1958) brought national attention to the cause and is still well worth viewing. The soundtrack is a hoot. What’s not a hoot is the tremendous extent of glacial retreat that’s obviously occurred since the film was shot in 1957. Thanks to the great work of Brower and the NCCC, as well as the political leadership of Senator Scoop Jackson and Governor Dan Evans, and the efforts of countless others, North Cascades National Park became a reality in October 1968.

I vividly recall a few early NCCC meetings, the self-deprecating absurdity of clueless me sitting on a couch, stiff as a brick, scrunched shoulder to shoulder between Dave Brower and Harvey Manning. A dozen years later, I managed to leverage that momentary couch togetherness in persuading Brower to scribble a back-cover blurb for a little book I wrote on forest conservation in Chile.

For Brower and Manning both, protecting wilderness was far and away their highest priority. Films, guidebooks and coffee-table books were critical tools for building public support to protect what deserved to be protected before the “barbecuers,” as Harvey would say, spoiled it all. As an agitator, he learned how to critique right up to the edge of civility, and a little past it some might say. His more fiery remarks were often seasoned with a glint of the eye and a dash of humor. He described his early evolution thusly:

In my immediate circle of mountain companions, “conservationists” were so notably rare as to be objects of curiosity, and I used to consider their sermons on the mount as eccentricities to be tolerated and enjoyed as one enjoys a friend’s odd devotion to yodeling or smoked oysters . . .

But he took those sermons to heart, writing:

They’ve logged my memories, they’ve cut me adrift from my human youth, they’ve left me no changeless wilderness to connect the ‘Whatever-I-was-then’ to the “Whatever-I-am-now.’ They made me what I am today, those Devils, and I hope they’re satisfied. Because now they’re going to get it.”

For people to be inspired enough to want to join the cause, to save the wilderness, they also needed to experience these places firsthand. Enter guidebooks. At The Mountaineers club in Seattle, Harvey led the effort 70 years ago to begin a publishing arm that’s since become the premier source of hiking guides and outdoor books in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Freedom of the Hills came first in 1960. Now in its tenth edition with nearly a million copies sold, Freedom remains the principal textbook for newbies and intermediates taking classes to learn the ropes of mountaineering.

Working with Brower in 1965, Harvey authored the influential Sierra Club coffee table book, The Wild Cascades: Forgotten Parkland. Soon after, the first official Mountaineers guidebook, edited by Harvey, was released in 1966: Louise Marshall’s 100 Hikes in Western Washington. The legendary twin brothers Bob and Ira Spring provided the photos. The book was a huge success and catapulted the club into the outdoors publishing world. Louise and Ira were also co-founders of the Washington Trails Association.

Together, Ira and Harvey would soon be on a roll producing informative, entertaining and inspiring hiking guides spanning over a thousand miles of trails and millions of acres of wild country. By 1971, the club had published guides to Mount Rainier, the Olympics, North Cascades, South Cascades and even the Alpine Lakes before it was officially designated as wilderness by Congress. New titles and editions seemed to materialize every year.

By the 1980s, conservation-oriented guidebooks by Manning, Spring and others played perhaps an underappreciated role in helping to win nearly three million acres of newly designated, big-W Wilderness across Washington State. Some of that was within existing national parks, but many of the 19 newly-protected wild places, such as the Mount Baker, Noisy-Diobsud, Boulder River and Henry M. Jackson Wilderness Areas were at that time highly vulnerable to logging, mining or other threats. I can hardly imagine accomplishing anything close to that under today’s dysfunctional politics.

I tried to adhere to that guiding principal of protecting wildlands when I started writing my own hiking guides to Northwest Washington in the late 1980s. It seemed a little awkward at first, knowing I was vaguely competing with Harvey “up north.” But I had a vision and went with it. When Harvey autographed a third edition of his 100 Hikes in Washington’s Alpine Lakes for me, he addressed it to “The king of the north.” I took it as a complement, though I later wondered if it might be a subtle warning not to step on any toes down south.

I hadn’t really intended to be a guidebook author, but with all my hiking and climbing, I knew the trails well. Co-workers would approach me for ideas on where to go hiking. Then one day someone suggested that since I knew the trails so well I should write a book. Hmm, I suppose I could do that. Now, five books and 13 editions later, the idea apparently stuck.

Some might argue that guidebook authors may have been a bit too successful, if you’re measuring success by the number of cars at the trailhead or bobbing heads at the overlooks. Overcrowding is now a thing to be sure (and a central theme for an upcoming blog post). On the other hand, there are still large swaths of unprotected wildlands in the Cascades that the public needs to know about. And there are trails worth hiking that somehow don’t make the same ten-best list that everyone seems to be googling. “Ten best” often doubles as a code for “most crowded,” so I encourage folks to do our part and spread ourselves out a bit, carpool more and try to avoid hiking in larger groups. I’ll have more on that in the aforementioned future post.

It’s also important to hit some hikers over the head with a bit of history. Too many trails and protected areas are woefully taken for granted, with little appreciation for all the volunteer sweat and tears, letters, hearings and hard work that go into protecting wild places and keeping them unspoiled and hikable for the generations that follow.

When it comes to the North Cascades, Harvey knew those stories as well as anyone, and wrote it all up as a single volume in the 1990s. When other publishers declined to publish his final book, Wilderness Alps, I stepped into the breach to edit and publish this nearly 500-page history of park and wilderness preservation in the North Cascades.

The manuscript was mostly composed on a typewriter, with scribbles and arrows and chunks of paper literally cut and pasted from once place to the next. Others helped digitize (i.e. retype) it all, and many donated their photos to the book. A committee of NCCC editors further edited my editing, getting us to the finish line in time for the 50-year anniversary, in 2007, of the founding of the NCCC. Sadly, Harvey passed on to the next wild realm in late 2006.

At the birthday party, members of the Issaquah Alps Trail Club, some of whom knew Harvey much better than I, shared stories and memories that were quite wonderful to hear. He coined the term “Issaquah Alps” which helped galvanize the cause of protecting one of the most valued hiking destination close to Seattle. The Alps include Tiger, Squak and Cougar Mountains, the latter being the site of he and Betty’s “200-Meter Hut.”

After the final speaker wrapped up, someone asked when we’d get to sing “Happy Birthday.” That’s all it took to launch a crowd of nearly on-key hikers into song. And there was no hesitation at the end for adding the phrase “and many more!”

Kris and I strolled downtown afterward to snag a fine Thai dinner, before commencing the long drive home to Bellingham.

Happy Birthday Harvey.

If you could use a good hike up a hill, here’s a trail map to the Alps.

That’s the sort of ambience I’ve been running into lately while carrying out distribution duty for my latest hiking guides. It’s nice to be able to do that work myself, partly because my audience is mostly local or regional here in Northwest Washington State. I don’t need national distributors, nor do I need to place books in stores I can’t easily drive to. Sad but true, the most avid hikers in Nebraska are not clamouring for books on the North Cascades, Chuckanut Mountains or the shores of the Salish Sea in the quaintly bookstores of Omaha.

So I get to visit a lot of cool bookstores in WA, and even speak at a few, including of course the imitatable Village Books here in Bellingham. But let this short piece also serve as a shout-out to several other great indies that are now carrying my books—in no particular order except for the first, Artisans Books and Coffee in Everett. I’ll be there this coming Sunday (June 8) at 5:00 pm sharing stories from the trail. Yes, I really did catch my boots on fire once, eight miles from the car. And, since I’ve walked all of the hundreds of trails I write about, I’ll have plenty of how-to, where-to stuff to share as well, from the Salish Sea to the high peaks of the Cascades.

Artisans Books & Coffee (Everett)

Book Rack (Oak Harbor)

Kingfisher Bookstore (Coupeville)

Moonraker Bookstore (Langley)

Kiss the Sky Books (Sultan)

As both a writer and a consumer, I’d be a miserable old dottard without these wonderful bookstores to quietly carouse.

By the way, if you can’t make Everett, I’ll also be talking up a storm at the Camano Island Library on Thursday June 12th at 5:00 pm. Two days later on Saturday the 14th (pre-Father’s Day) I’ll be signing books at the Camano Commons gift shop. And in mid-July I expect to be sharing more stories from the wild at Kingfisher in Coupeville.

You can always find my books here as well.

The retrofit design is pleasing and functional, with added lighting powered by wind and solar apparently in the works. It’s accessible from Little Squalicum Beach, and from the new salmon-friendly estuary restoration project and trail enhancements completed just last year. The view is exceptional. And lordy be, the old structure was still stout enough to be saved. Given how old it is, it could even land on the National Historic Register. And who can guess what something like this would have cost in 2025 if built from scratch?

After its commercial use ended in 1987, many of us trail geeks began eyeing the pier as an ideal terminus for the long-proposed Bay-to-Baker Trail, a 74-mile concept that begins at Bellingham Bay, of course, and ends at Heather Meadows above the Mount Baker Ski Area. To see this major chunk of the vision finally come to fruition actually fired me up with shot of endorphins I think I’d been saving up for decades.

To reach the pier (open 6:00 am to 10:00 pm), you can jockey for a parking spot at the small lot on West Illinois Street near Marine Drive (or bus or bike there), then hike a quarter mile to the pier. Or park at the far west end of Roeder Avenue (where the kayakers launch) and walk the beach about the same distance to the pier, albeit not at high tide.

Beyond the pier, Bellingham has made some great strides in building a major chunk of the Bay-to-Baker through town. Everson, Maple Falls and Glacier have had their own sections in place for years. Now can we just get the county moving on the rest of corridor? Or at least the low-hanging fruit, by adding bits to what already exists. Completing the Maple Falls to Glacier segment would seem to be a no-brainer. Then maybe Dewey Valley to wherever, perhaps utilizing some undeveloped county rights-of-way and other public lands to get it rolling.

There are also opportunities to establish a route through at least part of the National Forest above Glacier, even if the crazy politics going on these days might delay immediate progress. But the concept for the trail is too darn good not to happen. I might even go so far as to say it’s inevitable . . . some day. If that’s the case, why don’t we commit to a bit more progress in 2025-26 and get ‘er done!

In case you don’t know it, “604” is the main area code for greater Vancouver. “Surface,” I think, just has a nice ring to it. I failed to ask about the etymology of the name, but at least there’s no confusing these bikes with aerial or sub-surface vehicles.

My bud’s shiny new bike arrived in a box. Together we screwed on the pedals, attached the handlebars and a couple of thisses and thats, as the heap of parts in his living room quickly became a bike. When he hopped aboard, all seemed well at first. Then it was, oh crap, the power assist cut out. Probably something simple, but whatever it was, it was above our pay grades.

Mitch returned the bike to the warehouse in Richmond, and after consulting with the super-nice people there, opted to swap it for a smiliar model. Yesterday we drove back up to our favorite foreign country to retrieve the new one, right after scoring an excellent dim sum brunch at Sun Sui Wah.

Phil and Jason had his new bike relaxing on its kickstand right in the doorway, ready to ride. We ogled the wares and chatted a bit about the state of affairs between our two great countries, one of which seems to be afflicted with a bad case of rank stoopidity. We apologized on behalf of sane people everywhere, and assured them we’d come in peace.

More importantly, however, I needed a new headlight for my own Surface 604, a Colt they call it. Well, not only did I secure a new light, the guys also fixed my rear light (I’d somehow pulled the wire loose), gave me a new mirror, adjusted the handlebars for a better fit, then knocked out an unscheduled tune-up at a very fair price. We came away feeling like this truly is a company that believes in the happy customer bit about getting things right. (Not a paid plug here, by the way, just sharing our experience.)

Eager to ride, we next drove over to Garry Point Park on the other side of town. It’s the main southern access for the West Dyke Trail, and a pretty ideal spot to lounge around, walk the mutt or catch a sunset. We saddled up for Mitch’s first significant cruise on his new machine and embarked on a 14-mile test run along the dike trail. All was perfect! No electrical burps this time, and Mitch had officially joined the club.

And for me, I’d discovered a new trail. The smooth and level, packed-gravel path runs along this Fraser River dike (or dyke) and looks west out to Georgia Strait and across the water to greater Vancouver and the Coastal Range. Sidepaths lead to nearby parks and natural areas. Plenty of other folks, mostly on foot, were also out enjoying the sunshine, despite a cool breeze blowing in from the north.

Near the park, we also checked out Steveston on the southwest side of Richmond. Despite all the years I’d lived less than an hour away, I didn’t even know this place existed. It’s a quaint area of shops, eateries, boardwalk and working waterfront that’s enticing to explore, though perhaps better as a pedestrian than a biker. A number of historic buildings are preserved here, including the Britannia Shipyards and Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Sites. We politely walked our bikes through the more picturesque parts and I swore to return with Kris for a much deeper dive.

In any case, if you haven’t checked them out already, add the West Dyke and Steveston to your list of enticing Pacific Northwest travel destinations. It’s darned charmin’, with or without the ebike.

Also, just happens that the latest issue of Adventures Northwest magazine came out today, or the online version at least. Here’s a link to my story on getting acquainted with the “charms and channels” of the Salish Sea on our side of the international boundary. Hope you enjoy it. I had fun writing it. The story highlights some of the nicer hikes and beach rambles on those two islands as well as Fidalgo Island in Skagit County. (Did you know Whidbey is the second-largest island in the Lower Forty-Eight?

And really-truly, I watched a great blue heron riding a floating log on a fast-moving ebb tide, bobbing along for at least a quarter mile before s/he disappeared from sight. Sadly, no photo—too far away for a smartphone cam. But here are a few pics from some great places to check out.

Located on a very nice stretch of beach fronting Saratoga Passage, Cama Beach Historical State Park is famous for its dozens of cabins lining the shore, the prized artifacts of an old fishing resort. The site was threatened with redevelopment more than three decades ago. But thanks to the generosity of the Stradley family who owned and operated the resort, the place was happily saved from that fate to eventually become a brand new state park in 2008.

Unfortunately, the many fans of Cama Beach were recently jolted by Washington State Parks’ decision to close all the cabins, due to environmental issues and a long list of expensive repairs that may or may not be feasible to complete. Sewage disposal is a biggie.

After wandering through yesterday, my own gut says the cabins still look pretty stout, so why not install a couple of portable restrooms and warn folks they need to bring their own water? Generate some revenue while pondering solutions. Not all of us require the luxury of turning a tap or pressing the flusher. I think they call it rustic. That said, I won’t pretend to out-think the experts here, though one does wonder about such an abrupt and total closure.

On to the fun stuff. Kris was nice enough to drop me at the east end of the Cross Island Trail (it doesn’t actually cross the island), and meet me at the Welcome Center inside the main park entrance. From there we headed to Cranberry Lake where rafts of ducks and flocks of geese were dabbling and splashing away in this rather large beaver pond. A highlight was the bald eagle making a bombing run just above the startled necks of a some Canadian geese. They honked their objections to the eagle, which continued on, apparently finding no tasty goose eggs to steal.

We next ambled down to the beach and around the cabins, where several women had their spotting scopes trained on something in the water. Orca! Perhaps a mile offshore, we could see the spouts and dorsal fins of maybe a dozen whales, as a pod of transients (we later learned) slowly made their way south through Saratoga Passage.

It was the first time we’d seen killer whales since returning from the East Coast in 2019. We hadn’t exactly been looking for them, so it was a real treat when it happened so spontaneously. The nice lady at the Welcome Center said that grey whales had also been coming around lately and were feeding on ghost shrimp close to shore.

There is more than a mile of public beach here, so we walked the beautiful crescent coastline north of the cabins, passing seals, gulls, a squawking heron and a diving bald eagle that also appeared to come up empty handed. We passed only one other human walking a dog.

Before calling it a day, we moved on to nearby Camano Island State Park to see if we might still spot the orcas, but no dice. No complaints, however. The day before, we’d been at Fort Casey on Whidbey Island watching a flock of sea lions feeding and frolicking close to shore. Speaking of which, there’s a complete skeleton of a sea lion inside the Welcome Center at Cama Beach.

So, a fun couple of days for beaches and wildlife. Happily, we still have a few more beach walks to check out, especially on Whidbey Island, during these last uncrowded weeks of winter. By the way, if you happen to visit the many parks, preserves and/or beaches of Camano Island, the bakery and gift shop at Camano Commons is worth a stop.

A few pics below offer some highlights. Notice the picnic bench snuggled up to some drift logs on North Beach, as if to say, Hey, I was tree once too!

The hike was a good follow-up to a recent jaunt with Kris and her pop to Lighthouse Point and Rosario Head on the Fidalgo Island side of Deception Pass Bridge. For those pics, however, you’ll have to wait for my latest article in the Spring 2025 issue of Adventures Northwest, due out in a few weeks. (In case those two sites don’t make the cut, I’ll post them here.)

The walking paths described are all paved and flat, as well as bikable, barrier-free and kid-friendly. More detailed descriptions and factoids are included in the new edition of Hiking Snohomish County: 140 Hikes & Walks. And yessiree Bob, you can still order a copy in time for Christmas. Books normally ship within 24 hours. Or pick one up at…

• Bellingham - Village Books and Backcountry Essentials

• Anacortes - Watermark Book Company

• Everett - Artisans Books & Coffee and Grand Leader Mercantile

• Edmonds - Edmonds Bookshop

• Mill Creek - Kate’s Gifts

• Lynnwood - REI and Barnes & Noble

• Snohomish - Anna Marie Creative Collective

• Monroe - We Be Book’N and Main Street Books

• Bothell - Wanderlust Book Lounge

• Lake Forest Park - Third Place Books

There’s more about the book (Snohomish County’s most complete trail guide) here.

The book signing happened to follow a short hike around downtown, where a small cadre of locals and I enlightened ourselves with tidbits of Edmonds history. Like the founder dude, George Brackett, who allegedly pulled a fast one after Washington became a state in 1889. To reach the 300-resident threshold for becoming an incorporated town (a census-based count), Brackett wrote in the names of both his ox and Bill the dog.

And there’s the story of the fighter pilot, also from Edmonds, who smuggled his pet coyote into the U.S. Army and onto his aircraft so the two could fly missions together during WWII. For more, check out the Edmonds Historical Museum housed in a fine 1910 Carnegie Library building on 5th Ave. On the lower floor, the model train setup is awesome.

Around the corner is the 101-year-old Princess Theater (now Edmonds Theater) where the first talkie to reach town was the 1929 Broadway Melody, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year. The film packed the house. Just a week ago, Kris and I quite enjoyed catching a film there, Here with Tom Hanks. We highly recommend—the movie and the venue.

Edmonds can boast of its share of famous people who’ve called this place home, including trails geek Ira Spring, Senator Maria Cantwell, Congressman Brian Baird, author Robert Fulghum, pro-bowler Johnny Guenther, Olympic skater Rosalynn Sumners, Washington Wizards pro-basketball player, Corey Kispert, and former Wizards player, Martell Webster, among others. Yes, I had to look them up.

But when I asked my esteemed cadre who the most famous celebrity from Edmonds was, the resounding answer was Rick Steves. I knew this popular globetrotter ran his travel biz from Edmonds, but only learned on Sunday that he actually grew up in the town and has contributed mightily to good causes in the community. Celebrity status well earned.

Lastly, but not leastly, the Edmonds Beacon was kind enough to run a front page spread on me and the book in this week’s issue. The Beacon is the kind of great local paper that every community needs. Thanks to Brian for taking extra interest in my new guidebook. Curiously, we both had a connection to the Santa Barbara-Carpinteria area of southern California. I went to first grade there and body-surfed in the wild Pacific. I was like five or six. So in case you’re reading this (Brian or anybody), my apropos three-part “Saving Santa” story, based in Carpinteria, is here.

Thanks again Edmonds!

Where to Hike in the Rain

Mr. Bear continued toward us, descending to a rock ledge below a modest drop in the falls. Salmon were jumping one after another in their seemingly hopeless struggle to crest the whitewater torrent (thus the fish ladder). The bear, however, was no more successful than the salmon in achieving this ancient quest. He teetered at the edge a while, swatting at the water, yet the wily fish always dodging that salivating jaw. Mr. Bear finally gave up and wandered off, and we did too, though a small crowd remained to watch the salmon jumpers. We completed our walk and hit the road to Ucluelet.

After a brief visit to Tofino to see what was there, we turned south to Long Beach. We made up sandwiches and watched the curling waves and the surfers, while comfortably squatting in our camp chairs. A lone paddleboarder caught a few waves as well without even a tumble. Later, I looked at an ocean map and discovered that, paddling west, your board or canoe or container ship would have to travel well over 3,000 miles to find the next sliver of land off the south end of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Given the current state of global affairs, I might steer a little to port for Japan instead.

Too soon, it was time to leave the beach and get checked into our quaint cabin in Ukee. Lucky for us, there was just enough of the day left to hike the two-mile Lighthouse Loop trail. We found it to be even more picturesque than the pictures. At the lighthouse, I was struck by a cautionary sign noting the possibility of encounering bears, mountain lions and wolves in the area.

Wolves? This close to town? It seemed a stretch until I read the other notice nearby stating that a wolf was sighted this past summer right outside the lighthouse. Yikes. They haven’t bothered anyone so far, but whoa, I hadn’t run into a watch-out-for-wolves sign before. The warning is serious, since most wild critters with sharp teeth or claws can be unpredictable. Let’s hope they don’t become habituated to clueless tourists like me.

The next day we awoke to rain, which turned out to be a perfect excuse to enjoy a lazy breakfast and a slouch on the couch with a good book. By early afternoon, the skies parted and we were off to hike the Wild Pacific Trail. I’d read that it’d been rated somewhere by somebody as one of the very best hikes in all of Canada. That sounded a tad embellished, but who doesn’t like ocean waves crashing on rocks? As it turned out, this was indeed one of the most gorgeous crashing wave hikes we’ve ever done.

We parked our derriers on a rocky ledge next to a cove of craggy islets, mesmerized by the endless waves rushing though the black maze of protruding seabed, sending spray and foam skyward with every pelagic push. We could have spent the whole day there, but the late start required that we keep moving if we were to see a bit more of the rugged coast. And that we did. There were numerous benches and lookouts along the way, several of them creatively designed like a ship’s crowsnest, others overhanging the rocks. The town has clearly invested itself, both spiritually and otherwise, in this amazing coastal trail.

As we circled around to make our return, we came upon our only close encounter with a large, furry mammal: a doe, a deer, a female deer, then subsequently a ray, a drop of golden sun, a setting sun. Happily, we did not have a long, long way to run to find a drink with jam and bread. Hmm, those sound like lyrics. Somebody should write a song.

Day 3 was departure time: a drive back to the ferry at Nanaimo, with just enough time to stroll around the historic core and snag a hot cocoa and savory crepe at the Ironworks Cafe. We were instructed there to procure an authentic Nanaimo bar at Red’s Bakery down the street. Make that two bars. We obliged. This experience alone had us planning our next visit to the island, but with bikes in tow, and at least a couple of nights in the big city, one whose placename signifies “a mighty people.” We are mighty sure we’ll be back.

Looking at options, it was clear that my darling little hiking books were destined for the dumpster. Or should I say, the really big bin (behind the recycling company’s building) that may look like a dumpster but is actually meant for recycling mixed paper. I paid my ten dollars, pressed the boxes against my belt and reached in with both hands, almost developing a rhythm—grab-grab-chuck-chuck.

It does feel a little weird to toss hundreds of books into such a cold dark place. Maybe they’ll be pulverized, pulped and rolled into new paper for new books, reincarnated somewhere somehow for somebody. I can hope anyway. I snapped this pic and skedaddled.