For some reason I wasn’t expecting the lake or the lupin to be quite so eyegasmic

August 29-30, 2020

Goal: Ptarmigan Ridge in the Mount Baker Wilderness
Parked (luckily): Artist Point
Total Distance: 14ish miles
Elevation Gain: 3,000ish feet
Total Time: 24ish hours
Sun Horizon Collisions: 2 (one cloud for sunset)
Photos Taken: ~600
Summary: I take the mother unit on an overnighter to see color changing lakes and mountains on the edge of the North Cascades.

The Plan

This summer, despite having no life (and no plans), I rarely spent the night in the backcountry. Don’t get me wrong, I hiked/ran some 800 miles and climbed some 150,000 feet over the summer, most weeks making forays into the wilderness at least twice, but I only camped for 5 nights (and two of those were after fall had officially begun). I’m not going to launch into some extreme psychoanalysis of my backcountry practices, but it probably has something to do with lack of adventure buddies (RIP COVID), and the fact that I have a comfortable warm bed and shower less than two hours away.

Anyways…as September approaches, the nights lengthen, and the berries burst, I want to have at least one mother-son overnight adventure. Getting the difficulty right is challenging (to give us beauty and some semblance of privacy while also catering to my mom’s ability level), but luckily the internet is always there to help! So I spend a few hours on the dark webs of intricate Cascade terrain maps and detailed off-trail trip reports (Oh! The horror!) just to identify Artist Point as our launching location.

Once you got a couple hundred meters away from the parking lot, the Walmart vibes evaporated

Ptarmigan ridge hits all the search categories: limited elevation gain, relatively uncrowded, a secret lake (shhhh) and gorgeous views. It’s an offshoot of the Chain Lakes Trail which we have done twice in the past year (both times coated in snow) and seems to have just melted out, eliminating any barriers to entry. Unsurprisingly, we are not the only people who think Artist Point is a pretty place this weekend.

Be a Sheep

The parking lot is as crazy as a Walmart lot on Black Friday. People wait in line for a closed bathroom. Motorcyclists flex their muscles as if they’ve actually done work riding up to 5,000 feet. Baby strollers squirt across poorly parked spaces. Anxious hikers wait for 15 minutes to park closest to the trailhead so they don't have to walk another hundred feet. Discarded masks flutter in the breeze. Weddings. Bar mitzvahs. Political rallies. Barbecues. Ahhhh…basically everything that makes the outdoors great and full of solitude.

Everything’s better above tree line in the Cascades

Silent the trail is not, but it’s also not swarmed like the parking lot. If crowds ruin the trail for you, come a different time, take a chill pill, or go somewhere else. Otherwise embrace trail sharers, be kind, and appreciate all that utility. I learn for the umpteenth time this year that cars surprisingly take up more space than humans. At the fork for the Chain Lakes the afternoon crowds melt away and we are left with the stragglers: those returning after a day surrounded by phantasmic, cloud shrouded mountains and those late hiking optimists who believe just a few more steps will give them improved views (this time they’re right). Baker comes out from behind the puffy clouds and the green, flower-accented meadows lay out like a patchwork of light and dark on the glacier ground slopes.

Is there any mountain prettier than Shuksan (other than you Baker). Hanging glaciers, good access, ski area…

Tents

Shuksan is slightly more demure as we continue along the sparsely vegetated ridge line. For every westward step, the view of her base improves—the shroud lifting, exposure increasing—but her stunning face remains hidden. At three miles we come to the first spine where a few tents have already established themselves. Here Baker beckons beyond the next ridge (come closer, closer), while the northeastern section of North Cascades National Park expands to our south. I see you Mount Blum and I know the lake you’re hiding. I’ll be back one day to bushwhack up and discover what you have to offer. It’s tempting to set up here, but there’s no source of water and the best flat spot has already been claimed by a tent. Still Mount Baker calls and considering the next ridge holds both our original goal and a better view we hike on.

One mile later we see we’re not the only ones to have had this idea. What, up until this year remained a mostly secret camping spot, has now turned become the chaos at the edge of western expansion where the dozen or so tents spread out below us have each claimed their 40 acres and a marmot. The "perfect spots" are taken, but we choose a spot on our own little shoulder (what ultimately becomes our own little wind tunnel) with a view of the two giant peaks of the far north. The sky is rapidly changing. Clouds are evaporating faster than the crowds after a baseball game and the sun is already threatening to dip behind the western ridge of Baker.

Must keep going along the trail without telling mom where I’m going…

“We like the moon! ’Cause it is close to us” — “We like the moon!
’Cause it is close to us”

Don’t Go Towards the Light

With the tent established, and the promise of alpenglow, I am drawn further and further along the Ptarmigan Ridge Trail which terminates after another two miles at the Portals East. I’m not exactly planning to go all the way out there, but streaks of lupine and paintbrush, as well as the thought of getting above the surrounding peaks to get the best view continues to draw me forward. I’ve not stashed a headlamp in my pocket, but that doesn’t stop me as I blast through the Kiser base camp and scramble up to 6,500 ft before the color disappears completely. A single cloud streaks across the sky, framing the full moon and quickly torn apart by biting winds as I come to overlook the ancient glaciers. To the east everything bathes in yellow-orange-red-magenta-indigo light, a fact I’d enjoy just a bit more if everything even slightly loose stopped trying to fly to freedom off the mountain. It’s honestly not the best alpine sunset I’ve had this year (don’t worry, my coat and hair are already slapping me for thinking this), but it’s hard to ask for more beauty as the last light fades.

And then I realize I’m still two miles from camp without a headlight and my mother has no idea where I went (whoops. Sorry mom!). I know that if I can get the scramble done before complete darkness falls I’ll be fine, but it’s not until passing back through the base camp that I realize it’s already stopped darkening. A full moon dominates the sky and after my eyes have adjusted, I’ve entered the land of perpetual twilight. The return to camp is a balance of rushing along the trail so my mom doesn’t try to call in the search parties and stopping for multiple minutes at a time to take long exposures of the beautiful glaciers in the moonlight.

I return to the tent at ten, just as my mom has strapped on her backpack and set out to perform a "where’s Wyatt?" search on the mountain.

This is what full moonlight does to your long exposures….

"Where were you?"

"Over there"

"Uh huh. And why didn’t you tell me where you were going?"

"Well…I wasn’t planning on being gone for so long, but…sunsets"

"Sunsets. Okay. And…"

"I’m sorry."

(Disclaimer: Let’s just say for anyone who joins me on a hike, don’t be surprised if I disappear off into the ether, but I will try to do better to inform you where and when I will be back.)

Motherly disappointment (and worry) notwithstanding, it is cold when I stop moving. I thought I had left the wind behind near the glacier, or that perhaps its weakening was portended by the death of day hours earlier. Nope. There’s nothing like a consistent wind with temperatures a few degrees above freezing to really bring out the shivers. I am wearing every layer I've brought (I look like the Marshmallow Man) and I'm still relying upon the "get up and dance" method to stay warm. Dinner is subdued (we only have to prevent the tent from making a break for it a couple of times), especially when the hot chocolate we packed remains fifty miles away (whoops. Sorry mom!). As we finish, the stars struggle to pop out from under the watchful eye of the moon, and the Cascades ring the horizon. The lights of the tents are extinguished save ours and it’s mostly silent. By midnight I finally fall asleep with the soothing sound of THWAP THWAP THWAP when wind meets tent following me into my dreams.

Just using mom as a wind break as the first sunlight strikes the glaciers

Chameleon Lakes

Told you I’d feature this tent in a shot. If I ever camp near your campsite I’ll probably take an aesthetic shot of your temporary home.

The wind never abates, but it fades. Slightly. It’s a quarter to six and my youthly optimistic photographic motivations are not going to let me miss even a minute of the pre-dawn sunrise show. I scramble off my deflated air mattress (eventually I’ll get that fixed) and look to get a little elevation on the nearby rise so that I have an uninterrupted view of Baker and Shuksan. The beauty of blue hour cannot be understated, especially with Lupine rising out of the rock. Below, where most of the other tents have set up the wind is calm and the secretive Goat lake reflects. Above rose-colored light race down the sky, getting lower and lower until the tip of the volcano catches fire. We are perfectly shadowed by Shuksan, which gives us the opportunity to watch beams of sunlight spread down the deep valleys and illuminate the peaks while we remain protected. Then, after half an hour, a blinding flash of light announces sunrise. It bleaches the glaciers as I follow it down into the hollows where Goat Lake lies, recently melted after its long winter nap.

Supposedly goats have been spotted at this lake, but the only unusual signs of life visible to me are the half-dozen tents scattered around the lake. No judgement (and honestly great photo ops), but please make sure to adequately distance yourselves from lakes in the backcountry (especially if everyone can see you). You never know when some random person may have seen the Parent Trap one too many times. No pranksters this morning and down at the lake it’s almost perfectly still. Here, a glacial blue tints the water and that unwavering reflection of the ever watching mountain.

After breakfast (mmm…warm and soggy smashed oats) I return with mom to see a chameleon lake. What was once glacial blue has become jaded (probably a result of too many people checking it out). Oh, and it’s also green! Weather is forecast to move in later today and it’s already encouraging Mount Baker to play peekaboo with its admirers. As we watch small breaths of wind roll across the lake’s surface and clouds pass in front of the glaciers. The lupine (some of the last wildflowers of the season) waver back and forth and day hikers already arriving from the Walmart parking lot scramble on the rocky crags around the water. Shuksan smiles from behind, waiting for her chance to flirt with the clouds.

Eventually we pack up. Some die-hard skiers have arrived for some late August turns on the small patch of snow above our campsite. They whoop as they cruise on the slush while their husky chases after them down the hundred feet of drop. In the sky the clouds are spreading. On the way out we have one last glance of Baker, but just half an hour later high clouds have turned the sky a slate gray. Even as the blueberries on the trail remain a few weeks from their peak, it’s clear that summer is coming to a close. These fragile alpine areas only spend a month or two out of snow, but in those weeks they are unprecedentedly beautiful. It makes me think of the Coronavirus lockdown that will soon return as we head into fall and how if these flowers can wow the world after a year buried under snow we can probably survive another couple months stuck at home.

Caught Between a Rock and a High Place