North Cascades Day Trip
Diablo Dam and the North Cascades (some of the most beautiful scenery in the Pacific Northwest) offers a great day trip, via the North Cascades Institute and North Cascades National Park, to folks looking for a get-away that isn't an overnight trip.
It's the second year that the institute, working with North Cascades National Park, has offered the free guided canoe trips and hikes, partly to welcome visitors to the learning center — a complex of classrooms and dorm rooms built two years ago for $11.6 million.
"They were very popular last year," Christian Martin, a spokesman for the North Cascades Institute, says of the free trips.
The center sits at the base of Sourdough Mountain in remote southeastern Whatcom County, and is a cooperative effort. The nonprofit institute operates the center, the park service owns the land, and Seattle City Light owns the buildings, which it agreed to build as part of an agreement to continue operating three Skagit River hydropower dams — Ross, Diablo and Gorge.
It was Seattle City Light's decision to dam the mighty Skagit River that created Diablo as well as Ross and Gorge lakes in 1930 and it was the tallest in the world at 389 feet high.
During a recent tour, Cloutier points to toothy Pyramid and Colonial peaks, discusses the heat-seeking lodepole pine that needs 114 degrees to release its seeds from its cones, and talks the park's multitude of glaciers as well as the geological forces that created the jaw-dropping reach of the Cascades.
"We're in some of the steepest mountains in the world," Cloutier says. "This is amazingly steep terrain around here."
Then there's the unusual green of the lake, which is fed by glaciers. As they melt, they bring with them fine sediment called "glacial flour" that floats in the water and refracts the light. The more flour, the more intense the color.
"As the summer goes on it gets to be more brilliant because of glacial melt," Cloutier says.
For Details: www.ncascades.org/daytrips or call (360) 856-5700 ext. 209