Yesterday, I hiked to the Wing Lake.
10.4 miles RT with 3100 ft of elevation gain.
took exactly 7 hours.
Reached the TH at 9am on Saturday morning, and parking was a mess. There were so many people at the TH.
I parked on the side of the highway 1/2 miles away from the Rainy Pass entrance.
The car ahead of me the at the Parking, they were going to Cutthroat Pass and they mentioned there were no space at either of the THs of the Cutthroat Pass/Lake.
People parked wherever they saw a space, that whole section of the HWY 20 is an absolute mess.
while coming back I had to stop my car completely, the car ahead of me stopped in the middle of Highway to drop other passengers in front of the Rainy Pass entrance.
Saw someone ran over a traffic sign there too.
Enough rant about humans nonsense lol.
The hike started with a lot of People, I mean a lot of people.
I thought last week Ingalls Lake was bad, This is worse.
Somehow crossed all of them for the first 2 miles to the cut off to the Black Peak.
From there, the real fun began.
It was peaceful, although there were enough people going to the Wing Lake but all were far apart from each other.
Crossing the huge boulder field was extremely fun.
My suggestion, trust the cairns and follow them.
There were many cairns throughout the boulder field which kind of forked from one cairn and meet at another cairn.
Just pick either one of the cairn and follow that, I saw couple of people went too up in the boulder field and had to scramble down at the end.
The part between Lewis and Wing is extremely steep.
My Garmin tracked around 1200 feet of elevation gain in 1.2 miles.
At the wing Lake, saw many people were camping for the night!
The whole hike was enjoyable until I came back to the Maple Pass junction again, and had to hike back with a bunch of people! 🥲
Side note:
Every time I go to North Cascades, I stop at Upriver or Mondos restaurants at Marblemount for eating.
Yesterday at 5pm, I saw a queue outside of Upriver.
I wanted to mention this so that everyone can understand the amount of traffic North Cascades are getting nowadays!
EDIT:
For Tolkien and LOTR fans, I made a reel of The lakes and the cascade mountain! The link is attached on this report! 😬
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