Independence and North Lakes — Thursday, Sep. 21, 2000

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

The trail to Independence Lake is in good shape except for the short stretch just before the lake. It's steep and full of roots. The trail continues around the northeast side of the lake and begins to climb. The switchbacks have recently been re-built by the Northwest Youth Corps. I appreciated their work while I climbed switchback after switchback. Where their work runs out, expect some mud holes and just a handful of blow-down before reaching the highpoint of the trail. The trail passes by a small tarn to the left, then a rock field and continues down to a larger melt-water pond. This pond may be large enough to be called a lake; it has room for a two campsites along its shore and there are some great views to be had. I followed the trail around the tarn and down a steep, huckleberry covered hillside. The trail disappeared, but I worked my way down a little farther all the way executing picture perfect face-plants in the huckleberry bushes. The huckleberries were ripe and tasty so the time spent with my face in the bushes was not wasted. It eventually occurred to me that the reason there were so many ripe berries left there was that nobody goes that way! I checked my map and realized I had missed a turn. Returning to the rock field beyond the first small tarn I found a flag, a series of cairns and just about everything but a traffic cop in a smart uniform directing me up-hill to the obvious trail. Soon I hit the high point of the trail and started on down toward my first view of North Lake. I hadn't expected much from North Lake - I suppose since Independence Lake is an uninteresting, forest-bound pond, I assumed North Lake would be similar. Instead I saw a large, deep-blue gem of a lake. The trail down to the lake shore is long and loses 1500' of elevation, but is easily followed and in good shape with only three small blow-down. There's only one small campsite along the shore. The trail down cuts wide switchbacks near its top so I took a shortcut back up through boulder fields beneath the cliffs to the southeast of the lake to rejoin the trail near the saddle.