Devil's Dome in Pasayten Wilderness/North Cascades

Day 1

Packs on the Light Rail

Although we left our new apartment at 7 am, we didn’t make it to Libby’s vehicle in Ballard until 9am, which meant we didn’t get to the trailhead until 1:30 and started our hike at 2 pm.  It was hot, exceptionally hot for my Alaskan temperament. I kept coming up with every idea in the book and proposing them to Brooks about why this might not be the best idea: starting in the heat of the day, heat exhaustion, let’s start later, let’s change hikes, etc.  But he convinced me that once we started hiking we’d get closer to the water and into the shade and I’d feel better; he was right.

We had stopped at the ranger’s station in Marblemount to grab a permit for our last night as we’d be on National Park land, and the ranger had warned us the trail was very overgrown and we’d have to “bushwhack” the first three miles.  Brooks and I laughed back in the car after discussing our definition of “bushwhack” to this definition of “bushwhack.” There was no way this would be anything like breaking trail through alders, devil’s club, marsh, pushki, etc. This had a trail for crying out loud! We were going to be fine.

"Bushwhacking"

About a mile in, we were on flat trail in an old forest that paralleled the stream and Highway 20, and “bushwhack” never even entered my head as single limbs grew generously into the trail, but easy enough to shrug off.  I saw a pile of bear scat and was excited to see that there would be some animal activity regardless of the stream of traffic and nearby populated areas. Brooks didn’t think anything of it, but as we stopped for a moment in the forest, crashing in the brush and a black, round figure bounding uphill caught my attention.  A black bear cub ran up the hill! Brooks thought I meant up the tree, and I thought he was proceeding strangely, telling me to walk closely to the river in case the mother bear came at us. He was relieved when I clarified it went up a hill, not up a tree.

As we climbed up the vertical slope and away from the river, the heat began to rise right along with our elevation.  Near the top of the switchbacks, we met a couple coming down who had planned to spend a second night on the mountains, but the cloud of mosquitoes they ran into forced them out of the alpine.  Dressed in tank tops and shorts, they shared their swollen battle wounds with the mosquitoes and warned us to apply our bug spray at the upcoming waterfall.

Feeling hot, hot, hot!

With the heat and the elevation, I began to feel pretty weak.  I started getting a headache, fatigue, and walking became like putting my feet in cement.  I broke out another snack bar and was amazed at how quickly I recovered; I didn’t realize how much my body needed some nutrients as I was so focused on my body’s response to the heat and steep pitch.  

When we hit the waterfall, the mosquitoes first began to appear, so we quickly took the couple’s advice and lathered on the DEET.  We soon discovered they did NOT overstate the mosquito issue; these bugs were fierce! It was about 7:30 pm, we’d been hiking since 2 pm, and we decided we needed to get out of the marsh and hopefully the bugs in order to set up camp.  While it was gorgeous, the bugs kept us moving at a steady clip. As we left the marsh behind to hardened ground and found a place to make camp, the bugs did not fall off as we had hoped.

Those folks weren't joking about the 'skeeters!

Brooks was a trooper! Putting up a secure camp while being annihilated.  He's one of those bug magnet people.

Soon after dinner, I got horizontal, put in my earplugs, and quickly drifted off in the remaining daylight.  I don’t know how much time had passed before Brooks shook me awake and told me there was a bear in a neighboring camp--he heard them yelling at it--and he might need me awake to help him yell at the bear if it came into our camp.  While we had put all our food into a bear container and pushed it to the edge of our campsite, we had eaten our dehydrated food in our tent and weren’t thorough in removing all items with scent from our pack due to the bug attack and exhaustion.  We had forgotten to buy bear spray upon landing in Seattle. My fear was now paying for this lapse in judgment. I heard the nearby campers again shout and clap in the darkness. Brooks and I breathed silently, straining to hear any noises outside our camp.  Suddenly, we heard footsteps moving rapidly through our camp. We shouted “Hey, Bear!” continuously and scrambled to get free of the bug nest and tent and into the darkness with our headlamps to identify what was going on around us. Then, I saw eyes staring at us and shouted “eyes!” and pointed at the reflection in my headlamp.  Brooks then put his headlamp on it and was able to determine that was just a deer.

We climbed back into our tent and listened.  We slowly got horizontal again, expecting to be up most of the night.  We heard our neighbors once more shouting, but nothing disturbed out camp again that night.

Day 2

The next morning, as I slowly awoke to the lit-up tent of the morning sun, I heard footsteps moving briskly near our camp.  Because we have a floorless tent, I looked under and could see the ground cover move just on the edge of my vision and awoke Brooks who went from dead asleep to jumping out of the tent to identify the animal.  He discovered a beautiful brown fork deer and then collapsed back deep into his sleeping bag.

After breakfast, we quickly packed up our tent so as not to be idle with the early onslaught of bugs already upon us and the anticipation of the heat of the day.  We quickly came upon the neighboring campers who admitted it wasn’t a bear they were trying to keep from their food, as Brooks and I suspected, but a large buck from eating their sweaty clothes for the salt!  We were relieved, but we weren’t getting those missed hours of sleep back, so we continued on before the day got hot.

As we came to the summit of a mountain whose trail had greatly diminished about halfway up, Brooks pointed out that somehow we had missed the trail to cross the talus slope below us and had climbed the extra 200-feet for fun!  It was a beautiful view from the summit and we were able to peak into the backside of the mountain where no trail led; this was definitely country for off-trail navigating.

On top of our extra summit

Several hours later, the heat had risen along with the sun, and as we filled up our water bladders, swatting at the mosquito fog that encircled us, we decided that when we got away from the water (water = mosquitoes!) and found a flat spot in the shade, we would pitch the bug nest for lunch and to rest during the heat of the day.  It took quite some time to get away from the stream as the trail paralleled the alpine creek for quite some time, but by then, the pitch of the trail had gotten quite steep. We were able to hike off-trail about 100 feet for a flat spot and after laying down, we slept for two hours, exhausted by the heat and the sleepless night before.

Energized after the nap!

Brooks thought my dirty face was hilarious. 

After the refreshing nap, we knew we had to summit Devil’s Dome, the geographic feature for which our trail was named: Devil’s Dome Loop.  The stunning views changed with each turn, pass, and summit and soon we were surprised to see that we were directly across from the talus slope with the summit we had seen so early that morning.  We had put on the miles that day!

As we summited Devil’s Dome, we took in the vast landscape that would soon be our weekend playground.  The landscape is much different from the alpine views of Kodiak or Juneau and it certainly lacked ocean horizon, but the severity of the high peaks and glacier remnants have us very excited for future trips in North Cascades and Pasayten Wilderness.  A tent was already staked out at the very summit of Devil’s Dome, so we walked out on the flank to find another flat spot. Just as we found our space, a group of nine summited. This was incredible that we were 27 miles into the backcountry at the 7,000-foot summit of the peak and we still could not get away from people! In Juneau, this would be incredible wilderness. Sharing it with others is something we will have to adjust to. Part of me feels greedy, wanting it all to myself.  Part of me feels bitter by the intrusion of others into my wilderness experience. But another part of me is heartened that there are these many like-minded folks who also get out and enjoy this. Without hordes of people to defend wilderness, it won’t have a defense. We need people to love it and use it in order to keep it. It’s a pretty stiff catch-22.

We collected snowmelt in a little stream to filter and boiled water for our Idaho potatoes with home-dehydrated veggie dinners--mine with TVP and Brooks’ with SPAM.  We hid in the bug nest, again, and popped out to watch the sunset. We were happy to feel the air had cooled to reasonably chilly, a sensation we hadn’t felt since arriving in Seattle a week before.  However, neither had given us bug relief so back into the tent we went.

It was a little chilly at that elevation after the sun had set

I awoke during the night to use the relieve myself and was incredibly excited to see the amazing star display! I hadn’t seen the milky way that bright since camping in Grand Canyon during my undergrad days.  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the temperature was actually pretty nice, but even in the dark, I heard the hum of mosquitoes next to my ear and dove back into the bug nest. These mosquitoes were proving to be quite a formidable foe.

Day 3

This was to be one of our shorter hiking days, and Brooks thought this meant we were going to be able to sleep in.  But I was up and bouncing around in the cool early light with very few mosquitoes around and chomping at the bit to get moving before the heat increased.  From the summit of Devil’s Dome, our trajectory was downwards toward Ross Lake. It was a steep trail that took us quickly through several diverse areas of plant life--alpine flowers, brush, multiple types of forest until we ended on the bank of Ross Lake.  We passed a trail crew with the National park who was making the trail generously wide! As we lost altitude and left the alpine, we finally shrugged off the mosquito haze that had been on our tail since arriving at alpine.

Brooks described this flower conversation as "Do these petals make my stamin look big?"

Arriving at the flat trail that paralleled the lake, we began to see the presence of even more people out enjoying the cool water--kayakers, boaters, and even two teen cliff-jumpers.  We continued down the flat trail to our camp at Rainbow Point. My Gaia GPS said it was located at Point A, so we hiked to it only to discover, it was not there! Brooks pulled out his Gaia with an updated satellite view and discovered this camp had been moved back a mile.  We had missed it! Even though it was only a mile, we had big thoughts of jumping in the lake to wash the Rorschach images due to our sweat salt off our clothes and now backtracking a mile was a bit of a blow to the morale… not to mention we were looking forward to the toilet!

Rainbow Point only had three camp spots and one was taken so we grabbed the one on the edge near the lake.  We wandered down, threw our feet into the cool lake and filtered water. Brooks jumped in and swam out a bit, but I had cooled off enough that jumping in was no longer an enviable experience.  It was just after noon and we had all afternoon to hang out and enjoy our time before joining back into the rush of the world. We napped, we read, we talked, we glassed, we snacked, we laid on the picnic table and stretched on our sleeping mats.  It was a glorious afternoon of sitting in the shade. All the while, a doe wandered around Rainbow Point. She was accustomed to human presence and got increasingly close as she did the rounds on the point all afternoon.

Brooks and the deer

Day 4

We awoke without the rush to start hiking.  We had eight miles ahead of us to make it to the car.  We packed up and began to hike in the cool morning shade as the steep mountains on either side of the lake kept the sun from directly hitting the trail.  Without mosquitoes egging us on, packing up camp felt luxurious as we took our time filling our packs.

Almost back to the car...

Last bridge

As we continued paralleling the lake we noticed greater amounts of cedar trees next to creeks leading to the lake.  We startled a black bear, our second of the trip, and Brooks saw it huff away uphill. In four hours, we made it back to the trailhead, car, and busy Highway 20.

We made lunch of tortillas, PB&J, chatted with a US Border Patrol Agent, and then headed to Anacortes for a surprise dinner with Mol, El, Ez & Pres and then back to our new digs in North Beacon Hill.

And we did it with each of our two feet & heartbeat.

Brooks' version: http://kodiakan.blogspot.com/2018/08/july-2018-devils-dome-loop-lindsey-and.html