Lake Ann Trail #740

Two hikes that we wanted to do were located west of the Washington Pass and Liberty Bell Mountain.   Both trails, Lake Ann and Rainy Lake, are located from the same trailhead, near Rainy Pass.  This is also where the Pacific Crest Trail, the national trail that goes from Mexico to Canada crosses through Route 20. Each trail is listed at .9 mile long but Lake Ann had the elevation gain where Rainy Lake is flat and wheelchair accessible.

Lower left of map - Lake Ann and Rainy Lake, not park of national park

 Looking at the trail descriptions for both lakes, we decided to do Lake Ann first because it was an elevation gain of about 1000 feet, but both trails were the same distance from the parking lot.  If we felt okay after Lake Ann, we would go to Rainy Lake. This time Dave had his bear spray on him just in case.

Liberty Bell Mountain

Sunny when we left, but was very overcast at times

Pretty

Hiked up through heavy forest, had a total of 6 downed trees we had to skirt up and over.  One of the trees was a real bugger to get over.  After passing through the forest we came to a rock slide where an old avalanche cleared the way and a beautiful meadow lay at the bottom. I kept hearing the song from The Sound Of Music!   We passed a hiker come back down and he told us to watch for a porcupine, he spooked it and it went scurrying into the rocks.  The avalanche area was the hardest to hike over, very uneven, craggy rocks strewn all over.  We could hear and see pikas all around us but none stood still long enough for us to take a picture.

Some of the trees to climb over

Got past the slide and back into the forest canopy and had to stop for some time - the porcupine was rambling along the trail and we did not want it to release it's quills at us.  I was so surprised at the color - goldish tint.  Have never seen a porcupine in the wild, only in a zoo.  Amazing.  Big.

Well worn path

One of the switchbacks we climbed

The hills are alive with the sound of music!

Avalanche area - large slide of rocks, now above snow pack

Very big porcupine

The gold color - amazing!

After some time we found the cutoff to Lake Ann and had to hike through snow pack at times.  And the mosquitoes were horrible!  We had put on a lot of bug spray but still they were quite a nuisance.  The path to Lake Ann was very wet in places, sloshing through mud, we were definitely near the Lake, we were now in the canyon. Then - bam, right in front of us was Lake Ann.  Gorgeous!

Flowers just coming out

We counted 7 waterfalls cascading down into the water.  Bitter cold water, temperature was about 55, mosquitoes galore, but the peacefulness. Oh my!  We heard like a loon sound a couple of times, I turned around and stared at the rock cliff from where the sound was coming from and saw hikers up along the trail.  This trail, Maple Pass, goes along the upper ridge of Lake Ann and then drops down to Rainy Lake - considered quite steep once you pass Lake Ann.  And long - 8 miles.

This was high in a tree, had to really pay attention to notice

Snow pack

First view of Lake Ann

Oh my, so pretty.  Could see fish jumping.

The reflection of the snow looks like airplane wings

Deep water, could see huge trees in lake

middle of pic - zoom in - can see someone in red and in blue - walking
the Maple Pass from Rainy Lake

We stayed at Lake Ann for a bit, snacking, just looking around, then started back.  Even though we climbed in elevation to get to the lake and knew we would be dropping back down, the return trip was horrible.  Not only was my right knee killing me (been only 3 months since surgery) but my left foot (surgery 2 years ago) was aching. Both our knees were really giving us problems.

Our drive back, so much green

Waterfalls right at side of road

Once we got back to the RV we googled the hike to see what the distance really was since the poster at the beginning said .9 mile to Lake Ann and we felt so beaten up.  In reality we did a little over 5 miles!  We could barely walk last night but today just a little sore.  Thank goodness.

Our neighbor fly fishing

North Cascades National Park is just a small piece of the Cascades.  The draw of the national park is the 3 dams/lakes - Gorge, Diablo, and Ross.  The real scenic area is north of the park near Mt. Baker which we will be visiting in 2 weeks, and south of the park, the Twisp area we are in and then we move Friday to the Lake Chelan area for 10 days.  Lovely area.