Chain Lakes

Location: North Cascades – Mt. Baker HWY SR 542

Length: 9.8 miles roundtrip (loop)

Elevation: Gain/2200 ft. Highest/5100 ft.

Difficulty: Slightly Severe

Time: 5.45 hours

Mt. Baker and Iceberg Lake

 

The stats I wrote for this hike are different from what you’ll find on the WTA website because of how I chose to do this hike.

There are three starting points from which you may hike Chain Lakes:

Artist Point

Heather Meadows Visitor Center

Bagley Lakes Trailhead

We started the hike from the Bagley Lakes Trailhead, which, I highly recommend because it makes the full circle and the grand payoff is stunning. I feel like starting from anywhere else is cheating! But if you’re pressed for time or don’t have the energy, there are many variations of this hike.

 

From the Bagley Lakes parking lot, the trailhead starts where the Heather Meadows sign is. You might snap a picture of the map on the Heather Meadows sign because soon after you’ll run into poorly signed forks in the trail.

Fork #1:

Left – Wild Goose Trail

Right – Bagley Lakes Loop

Go right. 

Fork #2:

Left – Bagley Lakes trail

Right – Chain Lakes trail

Fork #3:

Left – Fire and Ice trail

Right – Chain Lakes trail

After the first summit, heading down:

Fork #4:

Left – Chain Lakes trail

Right – Galena Camp

Fork #5:

Left – Chain Lakes trail

Right – Mazama Camp

After second summit:

Fork #6

Left – Chain Lakes trail

Right – Ptarmigan Ridge trail

This is one of the coolest hikes I’ve ever done. It’s jam-packed with stunning views the entire time. You get it all: open meadows with wildflowers, streams, alpine lakes galore, aromatic woods, expansive valleys, steep ridgelines, glaciers, and of course, gigantic mountains all up in yo face!

I only wish someone would have told me that you have to climb two mountains. Not one.

Summiting the shoulder of Mt. Herman gives you eye-popping views of Shuksan and Baker with the flat Table Mountain Glacier in between and is an excellent spot to have lunch and/or head back down the way you came for a shorter hike. Continuing the trail brings you down toward Iceberg Lake as well as Hayes, Galena, and Mazama lakes, but you’ll eventually have to head back up, up, up, the backside of Table Mountain Glacier again to finish the hike. This last push brings you to a flat trail for the last mile or so where you can cool down and gawk at the vast, open valley where you’re actually looking down on Baker Lake and North Cascades Pass. I could go on all day about this hike, so just get out there and do it!

Trail to the left leads to Fire and Ice trail.

Hayes Lake

Upon reaching Artist Point, you can apparently take the Wild Goose Trail back down to the Bagley Lakes parking lot where we started. We missed it somehow and ended up just walking down the paved road. I recommend skipping the last unnecessary 2 miles and either hitchhike down to the parking lot or have a second car parked at Artist Point.

I rated this hike as Slightly Severe because we had to trudge through snow on a really hot day, were shocked at having to climb a second mountain, and sadly had to walk 2 miles of paved road to get back to our car. According to the WTA website, the elevation gain is only 1700 ft., yet my measurements came from wearing a Fitbit, which measures each flight of stairs as being 10 ft. We apparently climbed 220 flights of stairs, which makes sense because we had to ascend a second time. We were swearing the whole time that there was no way it was only 1700 ft…