Ashland Lakes, Bald Mountain via Ashland Lakes & Beaver Lake — Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

The hike along Bare Ridge to Bare Mountain gains at a relatively gentle pace and is snow free at the moment. However, the 100 Hikes books leave a bit to be desired. First, this trail gets very little traffic and less maintenance. Second, the instructions in the book are confusing at best and wrong in several instances. Let's start by getting there. The sign on the Mountain Loop Highway never mentions Bare Mountain and you have to drive up into the entrance before you see the FS 4020 marker. Look instead for the Ashland Lakes markers. The road is in good shape to the Ashland Lakes trailhead. The first mile is on abandoned forest road intersected by small ravines until it crosses a bridge. From there it gently rises, using lots of puncheons and turnpikes until it gets to the big rock high point. The book says it drops 500 feet to the Pilchuck River source but that must be a misprint. I'd be surprised if it is 50 feet. From there the trail is rough and overgrown, sometimes obscured. It climbs steadily with no views and there are lots of blowdowns and broken trees. Barbella and I cut as many as we could and tossed them off the trail but there are more than two gals with a corona can handle in one day. We got to 5.5 miles before turning back. There are no good views or places for lunch along the way, so we bushwacked up to a crown of rocks to get at least a dry place to sit. Could not see any lakes promised in the book and the trail makes no attempt to break out of the forest to overlook the valleys. We did take side trips to Upper Ashland Lake and Beaver Lake. Both are very close to the main trail and mostly boardwalk. Very easy to reach. We hope next time to approach from the Sultan trailhead and maybe see the Cutthroat Lakes.