My North Cascades Story - The King of the World

By Lowell Skoog, Publisher, Northwest Mountaineering Journal

As my 11-year-old son, Tom, stepped onto the summit I asked him to stop for a picture. He planted his feet wide, put his hands on his hips and gave a smile that said, "I'm the king of the world!" With the North Cascades spread out before us, he looked every bit the part.

My wife, Steph, and I were taking Tom on his first snow climb above Highway 20 near Washington Pass. As I watched him survey his domain, I thought of my own first trips in the North Cascades, more than thirty years earlier. It was on those trips that I left the trails far below and became a mountaineer.

I climbed and skied dozens of peaks during college and graduated in a high-tech field. Although the number of jobs in my field were much fewer than they are today, I promised myself that I would not leave Washington to look for work. More than anything, it was the North Cascades that kept me here.

The closeness of the Cascades to my home has enabled me to balance my love of mountaineering with my career as an engineer and, more recently, my role as a father. A couple years ago I completed a 25-year quest to ski, in stages, from the summit of Mount Baker to the summit of Mount Rainier, a distance of over 350 miles. This journey took me along the very spine of the North Cascades. Completing it was my personal Mount Everest, yet I didn't have to leave my home and family for months at a time to pursue this dream. Most of the journey was completed on weekends or short vacations from work. Those of us who live near the North Cascades are blessed to have such opportunities.

Now, as my son grows up to become a young man, I see in his eyes a flicker of the same joy that I have felt being in the mountains. He may not choose to become a mountaineer, but if he does, I want the North Cascades to be waiting for him, changeless, just as they were for me.