Washington Pass North Cascades




Washington Pass North Cascades

 

Liberty Bell Washington Pass

On to Burlington, the western terminus of the North Cascades Cross State Highway

and our first goal of eastern Washington.  We made it across the beautiful pass and stopped at Washington Pass with her mountains of Silver Star and Liberty Bell.  This is where I first learned to rock climb 46 years ago.  There was no road here then, only a dynamite blasted trail.  “You mean we have to hike in to where the trail begins?”  “What trail” they said.  “We just drop off the rubble down to the valley and Early Winters Creek then start up to Mt. Silver Star and the razors edge of Kangaroo Ridge.”  “Are you sure I know enough to be doing this?”  But it was grand and moments of beauty, strength, judgement, aloneness and expansiveness burned into my consciousness.  Darkness came to us up there after summiting 4 spires for the first time giving us the honor of naming them.  In darkness on icy snow and rock the stars came out and crowned Mt. Silver Star with the firmament as we leaned into the base of its cold granite wall above the glacier and had the most exquisite orange ever tasted by man.  We looked miles downward in twilight toward whence we came and what would in a few years become Washington Pass.

How can I forget this.

Today was glorious blue with shreds of clouds stratified and splitting the peaks as trying to pull them sideways.  As Jo Ann and I looked up toward those same ridges, chimneys and spires I felt so timesick for those developmental years when a young body could take and give so much to the space about himself.

On to the tourist cowboy town of Winthrop and plainer Twisp.  We stayed at the Twisp Riversbend Campground and dead tired spent a fitful 1st night’s sleep in the Air Stream.



Mt. SilverStar WA Pass N. Cascades