Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

September 27, 2017

1597m

Baker Lake / North Cascades Highway, WA

The small summit of Dock Butte offers some of the finest 360-degree panorama on a clear day with Mt. Baker, Mt. Shuksan and the Baker Lake area dominating the backdrop. The access is very easy with logging roads dispatching more than 1000 m of elevation gain from the valley floor. From the Blue Lake trail-head it’s a mere 1.5-hour hike to reach the summit although this is only true in summer months when the forestry road is free of snow. The best time of a year to hike Dock Butte is late summer or early fall when the bigger objectives are out of shape, or on a day when you simply don’t have enough energy, time or motivation.

This was exactly the case for me in the last week of September. A brief high pressure system granted a couple days of guaranteed sunshine but I could not shift around the work schedule to fully take advantage of it. My daily work does not start from late afternoon though so that meant a half-day hike in the morning could still be in the cards. Dock Butte seemed like a good idea for the first day of this sunny stretch. And to make my life even easier I decided to drive to the trail-head in the previous evening so that I could catch a couple extra hours of sleep. The drive was done by simply following the direction given by my iPhone apps and I did make there before midnight. The logging roads seemed to drag on forever but the conditions were much better than the averaged Canadian roads.

The following morning I slept in till 8 am since there’s no need to rush.  This trail is very well signed. At the junction with Blue Lake trail I took the right hand side branch which led me gradually up Dock Butte. The views did not open until much higher up though although through the thinning forest I could get glimpses of Mt. Baker.

The views completely opened up as I ascended a broad grassy slope towards the summit ridge. This last part is steep and the trail traverses on climber’s right side to avoid attacking an obvious gendarme head-on. The traversy stretches are on the shady north slopes hence quite icy with the morning frost and then the summit is “right there”…

I lingered on the summit for at least half an hour soaking in the views. I wouldn’t say it’s super duper spectacular but with the effort required this is hard to beat. The descent was pretty much uneventful although I did speed up a bit towards the end. This trip had taken longer than expected and I had to hurry up a bit.

After carefully negotiating the twisty and curvy gravel roads down to Baker Lake Road the rest of the drive back to Vancouver, BC was a cruise sailing. The border crossing was without much of a delay and I got back at roughly half an hour before the start of work, and that surely is an excellent timing.