12.63 miles of hiking • 4250' elevation gain •
In an effort to hike some areas without smoke, we decided to drive up to the east side of the North Cascades. This decision ended up not being a very good one. But, on this day, we had a nice hike. We hiked up to Heather Pass and continued on the boot path from there in the direction of Lewis and Wing Lakes. There is no official trail to the lakes, but there is a well worn path to them. You do have to cross a number of very large boulder fields and a small, loose dirt gully area on the way to Lewis Lake. There are cairns along the way to help with navigation, but you can see Lewis Lake for most of the time. Some of those boulder sections were a bit intimidating with very steep boulder ridges directly above as you pass through. Lewis Lake was beautiful. We continued on the steep climb from there to Wing Lake. Most of that climb is along a well worn boot path. Wing Lake was amazing. Views of Black Peak and all around the area were fabulous. To finish our hike, we retraced our steps to Heather Pass and finished the loop through Maple Pass.
