North Cascades National Park

The Cascade Mountains is a major mountain range of Western North America extending from Southern British Columbia through Washington, Oregon and Northern California.  It includes both non volcanic mountains (North Cascades) and the volcanic mountains in the High Cascades.  The Cascades are part of the Pacific Ring Of Fire, a ring of volcanoes and associated mountains of the Pacific Ocean. In the North Cascades most of the peaks are under 10,000 ft in elevation.  There are also very low valleys, sometimes as low as 6000 ft from the top of the peaks which makes the peaks look even bigger than they are.
North Cascade National Park is the largest of the three National Parks in Washington.  There are very few buildings in the park and there are not any services either.  It is just the mountains and glaciers, a  couple of rivers, some lakes, dams and creeks.  There are also several hiking trails and one major roadway through the park.  In 1971 the park had over 318 glaciers.  It was the most of any other park outside of Alaska.  All the glaciers in the park have retreated significally from 1980 to 2005 and the rate is increasing.  The recent warmer climate has led to summer melting and more winter melting events.  Some of the glaciers have completely melted away.
I have to say that the Northern Cascades are beautiful.  The mountains with the tall jagged peaks combined with the rounded green mountains are all truly beautiful.  The camera cannot capture how beautiful the park really is.  We drove the whole width of the park and we were not disappointed with any views.  Tim and I both agreed that a visit to North Cascades National Park should be on every one's bucket list.  We were a little concerned at first whether we would see any peaks due to the cloudy weather that existed in the morning but by mid afternoon the clouds disappeared for a couple of hours.  It really is an amazing place.