Excelsior Peak via Damfino Lakes Trail — Saturday, May. 23, 2015

North Cascades > Mount Baker Area

Canyon Creek Rd. is full of potholes so the drive up and down is an adventure :-) We went too early in the season and took the Northern Route towards Excelsior instead of the Southern (someone warned us, but we missed the turnoff). Passing the lakes (ponds) was fine, but within a few minutes we started encountering snow on the trail... and more snow, and more snow... we probably should have turned around when we ran into some skiers, but we just followed them for a while, thinking we might be close. After crossing many snow fields and almost losing the trail a couple of times, we realized that it was time to turn back. The skiers were still ahead of us, but the "trail" started getting really difficult and it looked as though they were about to turn back too. Moral of the story: don't miss the turn off to the southern route (called Boundary Way/Canyon Ridge Trail) and if you go the northern route and start seeing a lot of snow, it won't get better as you get higher ;-) What can I say - we're still getting the hang of this.