North Cascades Highway – PNW Audio Tours

Into the Mountain Heart
from Sedro Woolley to Washington Pass

Sunrise from Copper Ridge Lookout
The view of Hozomeen Mountain from Desolation Peak, where writer Jack Kerouac once worked.
Floating On Ross Lake
Cascade Pass and Pelton Basin
Stehekin lies at the top of Lake Chelan.
Canoeing on Lake Chelan near Stehekin.
Sunrise, as viewed from Purple Mountain in Lake Chelan National Recreation Area.
Meadows bloom on Sahale Arm above Cascade Pass. Lupine and other wildflowers have to adapt to short growing seasons and extreme temperature changes to survive in an alpine environment such as this.
A pika poses on a rock slope. Pika depend on the shaded spaces beneath rocky slopes to keep cool and store their haypiles for winter. Unlike many species in cold climates, they do not hibernate and rely on stored plants to survive.
A mountain goat crossing snowy slopes in the North Cascades. Mountain goat hooves are adapted to smooth, steep slopes.
Hikers stand beside a tree on the Big Beaver Trail.
This photo shows Logan from the Easy Pass Trail.
Wildflowers along Copper Ridge.
The Thunder Creek Trail is an access point to two other trails as well–Thunder Woods and Fourth of July.
Mountain goats stand along the Easy Pass Trail.
A Deer
View of Ross Lake from Desolation Peak

The North Cascades Scenic Highway, also known as State Route 20, is a ribbon of road whose course travels a corridor of rich diversity-through broad agricultural valleys and towering forests, through a narrow river gorge and some of Washington’s most rugged peaks, known as “America’s Alps.” Along the way, its winding path speaks of glaciations, of Native cultures, fisheries, and trade routes over the mountains.

It tells of National Parks and National Forests, of fire lookouts, poets, miners, and packers. It carries the grand vision of providing public power via three immense hydroelectric dams that still generate electricity for Seattle. Today, the North Cascades Highway connects both sides of the mountains, just as the Skagit River valley, which it follows much of its way, has done for millennia. Both the road and the enduring Skagit River are a passage into the North Cascades mountain heart.

Into the Mountain Heartfrom Sedro Woolley to Washington Pass

Into the Mountain Heart
from Sedro Woolley to Washington Pass