Glacier Peak Meadows, North Fork Sauk River — Tuesday, Sep. 13, 2016

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

We hiked to Glacier Peak Meadows 43 km round trip over 3 days. Started at 600 meters and gained 1400 meters to Red Pass at 2000 meters. Descended into the valley and camped by a the silty stream fed by the white chuck glacier. Saw many silver-back marmots along the trail and heard their shriek whistles. White-tailed ptarmigan and mule deer crossed our trail on occasion. We were mostly to ourselves except for the short section of the pacific Crest trail where we saw a dozen through hikers headed north going fast. Took a side trip to the white chuck cinder cone, remnants of a volcano. Stratovolcano Glacier Peak 3,213m can’t be seen from any highway in Washington despite it being 3,200 meters high. Under bright blue cloudless sky, from the highest point on our trek we could see Mount Rainier (4,392m high), 141 km to the south and Mount Baker (3,286m high) 90 km to the North.