The ‘most underrated’ national park is finally getting its due. Some say that’s a problem

BELLINGHAM — As of 2016, North Cascades National Park hadn’t seen 30,000 visitors in a given year since the late 1990s. A typical year for the park saw around 20,000 visitors come through its gates, compared to the millions of annual visitors that Washington’s two other national parks, Mount Rainier and Olympic National Park, were seeing over that same time frame.

“I do recall that there was the centennial celebration of the National Park Service [in 2016],” said Christian Martin, communications manager at education nonprofit North Cascades Institute, in a phone call with the Bellingham Herald. “There was a national campaign called Find Your Park … and a big push for people to go online and enter their ZIP code and find out what kind of public lands are around them, the national parks. That was the first time I noticed, we all noticed, a big blip in interest in public lands and the national parks. We could feel and see a jump in visitation when that happened.”

That year, the park got nearly 29,000 visitors, up from 21,000 the year before. Since then, it’s broken the 30,000 threshold every year aside from pandemic-affected 2021. Then, last year, it reached 40,000 visitors for the first time since 1995.

“It used to fill up maybe on the weekends,” the park’s Deputy Chief of Visitor Services Katy Hooper said in a phone interview. “We’re seeing those parking areas and access areas filling up almost every day of the week during that peak time, during the summer.”

With the increase in visitors has come an increase in attention. Within the past few years, the park has been featured in the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, USA Today and Popular Science as one of the National Park Service’s hidden gems. Just last week, Travel + Leisure published an article calling it the “most underrated national park in the country.”

The increased attention is bringing even more visitors.

“We’re able to see how many people are coming to the park based on our sales in [the North Cascade Institute’s gift] stores,” Martin said. “Basically, we set a new record every year for not just dollars, but number of people in the stores, people going through checkout, to the point of last year and this year it’s fairly insane.”

Beyond visitor stats at WA national parks

Even with the increase, North Cascades consistently ranks as one of the least-visited national parks in the country. Last year, it was the seventh least-visited park, and the second least-visited in the 48 mainland states. But those numbers are misleading.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the park saw visitors in the high six figures every year, peaking at 917,581 in 1978. But between 1990 and 1991, the park’s visitor numbers dropped from 456,444 to 22,796.

According to Hooper, that was caused by a change in how the National Park Service measured the park’s stats, not an actual drop in visitation. Previously, the NPS didn’t differentiate between North Cascades and the Lake Chelan and Ross Lake National Recreation Areas, which are attached to the park.

Ross Lake in particular accounts for the bulk of the complex’s visitors due to its accessibility from State Highway 20. Much of the area people associate with the national park, including its visitor center, are technically in Ross Lake. The lake alone would rank in the middle of the pack among the country’s national parks when ranked by the number of annual visitors.

“They used to lump all of the stats for the overall complex, just under North Cascades. And, and then sometime with it, that break happened, I think it was in the ’90s — I don’t remember the date for sure — is when they started collecting stats for the individual units,” Hooper said.

But even accounting for the change, the complex saw a drop-off in visitors over the next decade. Ross Lake’s visitation dipped well below 300,000 for much of the 2000s, while the park itself saw visitor numbers drop below 20,000 for five straight years. According to Martin, that’s partly a consequence of how the park was designed.

“When it was established, it was specifically created to be a mostly wilderness park … North Cascades, the whole philosophy when it was created was this is going to be a wilderness park and it’s going to have minimal frontcountry resources,” Martin said. “I think, therefore, it has less identifiable iconic locations (like) … Old Faithful or the Hoh Rainforest, or Paradise Lodge in Mount Rainier, or Delicate Arch in Arches.”

But as the park has gotten more attention, visitation has increased just as dramatically at Ross Lake and Lake Chelan. While the complex as a whole saw between 300,000 and 400,000 annual visitors throughout the ’90s and 2000s, it’s broken the 900,000 visitor threshold each of the past six years.

“Definitely on the ground we don’t feel as though we’re flying under the radar,” Hooper said.

Parking, campground reservations challenges

The park is far more full than it used to be, but that doesn’t mean it’s received any additional staff or funding.

“I would say our annual budget has stayed the same over the last few years,” Hooper said. “The amount of staff we have now with the amount of visitors versus, say, 10 or 15 years ago with the amount of staff and visitors is greatly different with that increase in visitation.”

Hiring additional staff members is more difficult than it sounds, according to Martin.

“Being able to attract staff and rebuild our staffing teams — whether it’s chefs, housekeepers, maintenance, instructors — the No. 1 limiting factor is housing availability,” Martin said. “There’s no rentals anywhere around the park, and there’s barely any houses for sale.”

It’s not just park staff that’s affected. Martin has noticed visitors having trouble finding parking or reserving a campground.

“For the public coming up, campground reservations are a major challenge and the popular areas in the park are pretty [much] at capacity,” Martin said.

The North Cascade Institute runs boat tours in Diablo Lake each year into October. But visitors will have trouble finding a seat on one of them this year.

“Just this Monday or maybe Tuesday we sold out every seat on every boat tour 100 percent,” Martin said. “It’s not even August.”

The news isn’t all bad, though. Martin’s found that the farther you go into the park, the easier it is to enjoy what it has to offer.

“The frontcountry is strained. So the roadside pull-offs, visitor’s center, the campgrounds, they’re overstrained,” Martin said. “But pretty much if you hike most trails three, four or five miles in or, or you paddle for half a day up Ross Lake, then you’re going to be in pristine environment with not very many people around.”

How to visit North Cascades responsibly

While the park is feeling the strain of its increase in visitors, Martin doesn’t want to discourage people from visiting. Instead, he recommends visiting during the park’s off season or during the middle of the week.

“In general, I would say visit the North Cascades before Memorial weekend and after Labor Day weekend when possible,” Martin said.

He also suggested venturing as far from the highway as you can.

“If locals can come up to the North Cascades and be prepared to either paddle a kayak or canoe, or put on their hiking boots and get ready for a couple mile walk, people will find that just getting a few miles away from the highway, the vibes will change a lot,” Martin said.