The North Cascades is seriously one of the most scenic and amazing places in the country (planet?). This entire area is a must-experience for anyone who loves the outdoors.
On this trip, we decided to hike a more obscure trail off of Mountain Loop Rd. We got everything we hoped for out of the Island Lake trail and quite a bit that we didn’t.
My brother – the esteemed hikingislife writer here on the blog, planned this hike for my son and I. You should check out one of his other posts on his hike to Sylvester Lake. While I’ve certainly been around the PNW quite a bit, hikingislife has hiked just a tad bit more (okay maybe a lot more).
He specializes in finding new trails, remote and wonderful places and sometimes (just for his older brother?) specializes in unique combinations of joy and misery on his hikes.
We got up to the mountains super early on a weekday and didn’t encounter another soul on the entire trip.
We made it to the trailhead which is announced as “Boardman Lake”, with no event, and set off up the well-defined trail. There was some “squishy terrain” early on that proved to be a nice foreshadowing for what we would experience in the higher elevations, but at the time I thought nothing of it.
Early on you pass Evan Lake which was an encouraging start to the trip. The Island Lake trail stays well defined although not exactly what I would call “maintained” all the way up to Boardman Lake.
The first bit of shoreline of Boardman Lake is probably just about the halfway point in distance to Island Lake, and maybe elevation gain, but certainly not time. We were in good spirits at this point and felt like this hike was going to be just an uneventful good time up the mountains of the North Cascades to see some cool scenery and get some good exercise.
We saw some cool wildlife like these frogs. Or maybe toad?
And a few interesting species of birds like this Sapsucker.
There’s a nice little primitive camping spot about halfway around Boardman Lake that we took a break in, had some snacks, and water, and snapped some pics.
At this point, there started to be a bug here and there that buzzed by our faces. Mostly gnats, midges, maybe a skeeter or two. Small black things that were quite interested in us. I’m not a bug expert, so we will just refer to them as bugs for the remainder of the post.
As we set off for Island Lake, we tracked the shoreline of Boardman Lake a bit longer, veering away to go up and over some more difficult shoreline terrain to veer back one last time.
The trail really starts to become difficult to find and stay on in this section and really all the sections from here until Island Lake. The trail exists, but it’s not well-worn, so sometimes you have to do a little bit of exploring to find the next section.
My brother’s GPS tracks he saved from his previous hike on this trail proved to be invaluable for picking up the trail or at least the right path up to Island Lake. If you are going to be committed to these types of adventures, you should really have one of these.
As we made our way up the last half, the terrain got much steeper, the trail much more difficult to keep and two important aspects of hiking misery really started to take shape.
The ground got significantly more wet. You know that kind of wet where you take a step on what appears to be just a bit of dewey wet grass and then the water comes up to your ankles? I mean, I love hiking in wet shoes and socks as much as the next guy, but…This aspect of the hike was still slightly better than the swarms (clouds?) of bugs that thickened the further toward Island Lake we became.
I mean a bug or two doesn’t really bother me, but when you cannot breathe through your mouth without inhaling a bug or two, I start to crack just a little bit. Okay, when you cannot really keep your eyes open because they want to fly into your eyeballs, that’s when I start to break down.
The combination of the two, the difficult terrain and losing and finding the trail multiple times as we slowly picked our way up made for some difficult moments of mental (emotional?) discipline. All the while we encouraged my son to keep going as well. 🙂
When we finally got to Island Lake, the scenery was definitely amazing, but not worth staying around for amidst the hellish nature of the bug cloud. I think what must have happened was, that this elevation and area had a fresh snow melt, followed by the higher temps we had recently, which must have triggered a bug hatch of epic proportions. Lesson learned.
As we made our way back, it really required everything to not just hastily parkour my way down the mountain and leave my brother and son behind. Instead, we slowly and steadily made our way back, clinging on to whatever remained of our mental health and the hope of getting back out of the bugs.
You can only do so much planning though right? Sometimes, conditions and adventure just finds you, and you make the best of it.
You come out the other side a more resilient and better person. And you come away with the “cup is full” feeling of spending the morning in nature, getting exercise, and building memories with family and good friends (#PNWBestLife right?).
I highly recommend this hike, but maybe a month later when the bugs and wet factors have died down a bit. My brother, the expert hiker has also published an awesome list of hikes you can check out for other ideas on where to go near Seattle to get away from it all and have a similar awesome experience.
