Fritz Hoffman worked with me briefly and we went on an extended hike deep into the recesses of North Cascades National Park. We took the Lady of the Lake boat trip up Lake Chelan into the remote area of Stehicken and then a National Park Service van about 20 miles into the the heart of the park where we were dumped off. We never actually climbed anything substantial but had some very wild occurances on this trip. We tried to climb Mt. Logan but were turned back after seeing a black cloud over the summit and lightning actually strike the peak from Park Creek Pass (6,040').
We also went to Trapper Lake, a no-trail-access lake that is the largest natural lake to be found in the park. We crawled up through a bear trail that went up a ravine full of salmon berries. From Trapper Lake, we went up to a no-name pass (5,700'), east of Pelton Peak, to see beautiful views of the Cascade Pass / Sahale Peak area.
We awoke one morning to see a totally clear sky, but the sun never shined as the rays were blocked by a humongus cloud of volcanic ash from a Mt. St. Helens eruption (am guessing about 200 miles away). We found a thin coating of ash on our tent shortly thereafter. We ended up meeting the Park Service van at a pre-determined time, days later, for our trip back to Stehicken.
