Sauk Mountain — Sunday, May. 15, 2016

North Cascades > North Cascades Highway - Hwy 20

After 2 failed attempts, on the same day, of driving to hike other trails and not being able to get there because of road conditions... we were excited to do this hike! Our AWD vehicle made it over a couple bad spots in the road - the road was washed out (had deep ruts) in a couple parts, and there was thick snow across it in another - some people didn't even attempt to cross it, and parked their cars since it was close to the trailhead parking lot. It was a very foggy day up there, but we decided to go for it! This was our first time hiking this trail, and we loved how there were wildflowers blooming everywhere. The flowers were our only view though, as we could not see anything else through the thick fog. My husband and I found the trail to be a bit dangerous too. We were hiking with our kids, and saw they were slipping and tripping on many loose rocks on the trail. Since it's also a trail with a steep drop-off to one side (the entire way), we were very concerned with all of the tripping everyone was doing. Rocks would also fall off the trail, roll and accelerate downhill, which we found very worrisome for any hikers below. It was a good workout for us though, and we had almost made it to the top (we think) but then we encountered a very thick, large patch of snow covering the trail. This was right at a spot in the trail where there was a hairpin turn around a corner, with a steep drop-off to one side. We tried to see if we could walk across the snow, but we started slipping and weren't willing to risk it. So we decided to turn around and hike back down. Very disappointing we didn't get to see the summit, but maybe another time!