My wife and I pulled off an overnight backpack up Thunder Creek in the North Cascades National Park. There are multiple campsites along this trail but you have to reserve a site, in person, either the day before or the day of the hike, at the Marblemount ranger station. The station opens each day at 7am and you take a number and get in line. We arrived around 8am and waited less than 5 minutes. We ended up with a site at the "Junction" camp which was about 10 miles down the trail.
The trail head is located at the Colonial Creek campground. There was plenty of parking adjacent to the trail and bathrooms are also located right there. The first 8 miles or so of the trail rises around 700 feet, very gradually. The forest is quite serene and Thunder Creek is just that, a raging torrent the whole way. Sporadically, there are red huckleberries, blueberries, and my personal favorite, Thimble berries, located along the way. After reaching the Tricouni campsite at around 8 miles, the trail begins to rise sharply and we gained around 1,000 feet over the next 2 miles to reach the Junction Camp. We actually were assigned the Junction "Horse" camp. The regular Junction camp has MUCH better views so I highly recommend the regular camp and not the horse camp. Camp fires are allowed and there is plenty of dead wood/bark lying around, and water is abundant. Note that the Tricouni camp would probably be a better destination and was our first choice, but it was already taken.
The trail continues for many, many miles and eventually links up with the Cascade Pass trail and the trail to Stehekin. A short distance from Junction there is also an historic trapper cabin that you can visit, though it requires hiking down (and then back up) 1,000 feet in less than a mile. We decided against taking on that trek, and hiked back out the next day. The bugs on day one and at Junction camp were pretty much limited to small, annoying flies. There were the occasional biting fly and mosquito but for me they were not that prevalent. By the time we got the fire going at dusk, most flying critters were gone. We woke up to a deer looking directly into our tent, and the bugs on day two were much less annoying.
Great hike. Views are largely obstructed by trees, which is unfortunate. I think the views get better the further you go on the trail, which is what I may do next time.
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