Bare Mountain Hike

25 September 2006 by ben.

The day after returning from Manzanita, Sunday August 27th, Kim, Bonnie and I climbed Bare Mountain in the heart of Washington’s Cascades. After driving about 45 minutes west from Seattle to North Bend, we continued north on a county road for 4 miles and then bounced onto a winding, washboarded, and fir tree-enclosed gravel road for another 18 miles to Bare Mountain Trail No. 1037.

We’d read that there were 50-plus switchbacks on this hike, so we knew it was going to be a long day. But the guidebooks promised amazing views, so we figured it would be worth it. Kim and I previously came up here in 1992, but we only made it 2/3rds the way up the slope, leaving all the best views for some later hike (14 years later, as it turned out). The lower section of the route traverses an immense, steepening field of gigantic ferns dotted with cedars and elderberry bushes. Higher up, the ferns give way to a sparse forest of alpine firs scattered among thousands of red huckleberry and wild blueberry bushes.
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