North Cascades notes

The North Cascades are pretty dramatic. There's tons of Congressionally designated wilderness, plus the North Cascades National Park. Together it's pretty much the biggest wilderness complex in the U.S. outside of Yellowstone, Glacier and central Idaho. There's lots of glaciers, fast rivers, ridiculously jagged peaks and hundreds of square miles of classic old-growth Douglas fir and western hemlock forests.

Many of the photographs here were taken on the North Fork of the Sauk River. Anything in the vicinity of Mt. Baker (Heliotrope Ridge, Skyline Divide) is nice, as is anything on the large ridge complex to the north of Baker on the other side of Mt. Baker Highway (Excelsior Ridge/Yellow Aster Butte area). Read more about these areas here.

Almost all of the north Cascades are protected from logging, mining and roadbuilding, although there are still some dingbats who think thinning a few tree plantations in the North Cascades is going to unravel the universe. I've always thought it was a little sad that activists are up in arms about well considered efforts to thin out a few tree farms when the BLM in southern Oregon is still clearcutting 400 year old trees with relatively little of the environmental movement's resources devoted to that area.