What I wish I knew before visiting North Cascades National Park | Soaring Temperatures, Wildfires, and more!
- Happy Nomads
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
North Cascades National Park is one of the least visited National Parks in the United States. In 2024, the park fell to the bottom 10 least visited with approximately 17,000 annual visitors. Why? Some say it’s due to the lack of infrastructure, the remote location, etc., but I honestly admired the focus on the wilderness at this National Park.
Despite this possibly being one of the most challenging and disappointing trips to a National Park I’ve experienced, I would 100% go back. In this blog, I’m going to tell you the things I wish I had known and researched before visiting the park!
We visited North Cascades National Park in early September of 2024. At first, I didn’t think anything of it because the recommended months to visit are mid-July to mid-September and because we’re from Texas, we assumed it would be cold there... That was fair to assume, right? It’s almost Canada... Well, wrong! It was 80-90 degrees in the park at that time. Since we prefer to boondock off-grid, this made things a little complicated because we would have to run our A/C all day in this weather. We considered it at first, but upon further research we found out there was a large wildfire at the center of the park. Mind you, we are hours from the park at this point.
Since we travel full-time, we don’t typically know exactly when we’ll reach a place. It can always be a give-or-take-a-few-weeks kind of situation, haha. In 2024, we were extremely unplanned because we actually hadn’t considered doing the whole west coast until we were, well, there. Needless to say, we weren’t turning around at this point.
We decided we would stay at a campground to avoid having to worry about the fires spreading and not knowing about it, and because we really didn’t have much luck finding a good dispersed camping site to stay in on the west side. We opted to stay at the National Park’s Newhalem campground. This campground is dry, meaning there were no water or power hook-ups for our RV. They had a water filling station at the front, showers/bathrooms, and trails along the river. It was home for four days!
I highly recommend checking the weather and fire status of the park before you go! When we go back, I will definitely be aiming further into the fall season. There is much cooler weather in the park from September-October and you may get to see the larches (yellow trees) change colors!
When you have your entire house and your pets with you, you may feel a little discomfort being near a wildfire! We felt much better about it being in a campground with other people and Rangers passing through frequently. The fire, at the time we were there, was largely contained so we felt comfortable with our decision to stay.
However, that fire caused SO many trail closures! The thing about North Cascades National Park is that it is pretty inaccessible from the roads. This is a national park you want to visit if you’re an avid hiker or backpacker because nearly all the hikes are 8+ miles. We do at least one longer hike in every park we visit, but we like to do several shorter hikes, especially when we don’t have as much time. This fire closed the hikes around Diablo Lake and Maple Pass (the hike we’d planned to do), so we were really only left with the hikes on the east side—which is the complete opposite side of the park from our campground!
So, second tip: research the hikes you’d like to do in advance, plan a backup trail, and plan your accommodations accordingly! I’m glad we got to drive the scenic route through the park and see Diablo Lake, but staying on the eastern side might make more sense depending on the hikes you plan to do.
We ended up doing the Blue Lake trail (4.6 miles), which actually falls in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest bordering the park. The makeup of North Cascades National Park is kind of tricky because a lot of the land is actually designated wilderness or national forest, so check the rules of the appropriate agency for the hikes you plan to do. Blue Lake was a cool hike, especially because we were able to bring our dog, Bae, since it is on forest land. It was a moderate hike that I would highly recommend. The lake at the top was so cold and blue—truly magical. If you do bring your furry friend, remember to carry enough water for you both and pack out any waste :)
Views from Blue Lake Trail
The two entrances of the park (east and west) are far apart. The drive between the two is about 1.5 hours, so definitely take this into consideration when planning your trip!
My last bit of advice is that you can kayak Diablo Lake! Do it! Tell me how it is :) We are definitely doing this the next time we visit!
As always, please comment any questions below and I’m happy to answer them! Check out our YouTube video linked below for more detailed information & happy travels <3
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