North Cascades -- Mt. Baker, Cascade Pass, Sahale Glacier -- August 16-18, 2007

^{This trip is rated 6 boots out of 5 on the Hiking Bootometer.}

We spent Thursday night at Rasar State Park,

where we tried out the brand new night shelf for the first time.

Then we headed up Baker Lake Road Friday morning and first hiked up to Park Butte, then up the Railroad Grade moraine trail to harass the marmots.

What we see above is a sad case of blatant and gratuitous marmot abuse, which we were to later lament - but we just couldn't help ourselves and the kids got a real kick out of it too.

Here the kids enjoy the fresh mountain air.

Sunlit snow on the Black Cliffs.

The Sisters.

The northern moraine.

The top of Baker finally came out of the clouds...

briefly.

The Sisters.

Back to Rasar State Park for SHOWERS!!!

Then to Concrete for PIZZA!!!  Then to Mineral Park Campground 15 long miles east of Marblemount for another night in Motel Mazda.

Starting up to Cascade Pass on Saturday.

Above Cascade Pass and heading to Sahale Arm.

Finally over the ridge (1 mile and 800' above Cascade Pass) and looking down at Doubtful Lake.

The hope was to get up to the Sahale Glacier.  The little "V" on the image above shows the ridge behind which the foot of the glacier sits.  At this point we pretty much figured that it wasn't gonna happen, since we had gotten our usual late start and Sue already was coping with a bad case of Disco Legs.

At the Sahale Glacier.

Now, how to get down without falling painfully to our premature deaths?