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The North Cascades National Park Service Complex includes North Cascades
National Park and Ross Lake and Lake Chelan National Recreation Areas.
North Cascades National Park contains some of America's most beautiful
scenery -- jagged peaks, deep valleys, cascading waterfalls and over 300
glaciers -- within its 505,000 acres (202,000 hectares). Ross Lake
National Recreation Area (118,000 acres, 47,200 hectares) is the corridor
for scenic Washington State Route 20, the North Cascades Highway, and
includes three reservoirs: 12,000-acre (4,800-hectare) Ross Lake, 910-acre
(364-hectare) Diablo Lake, and 210-acre (84-hectare) Gorge Lake -- water
gateways to more remote areas. Lake Chelan National Recreation Area
(62,000 acres, 24,800 hectares) rests in a glacially carved trough in the
Cascades Range. Lake Chelan is one of the nation's deepest, reaching a
depth of 1,500 feet (450 meters). It offers boating, fishing, and
lakeshore camping. The average width is less than two miles (3.2
kilometers), but Lake Chelan extends 50 miles (83 kilometers) into the
Cascade Mountains. The lake's northernmost four miles (6.4 kilometers) are
in the National Recreation Area, including the remote community of
Stehekin and the Stehekin River Valley. |
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Desolation Peak, Mount Fury, Jagged Ridge, Mount Terror
— the names on the map strongly hint at the character of the North
Cascades National Park Complex. This is the largest and most rugged alpine
wilderness in the contiguous United States, with scores of 8,000-foot
peaks, upwards of 400 glaciers, virgin Doug-fir and western red-cedar
forests, and wildlife that includes gray wolves and grizzlies. |
