A letter from a local
End of the road, start of everything.
Mazama is a store, a climbing shop, and a few hundred people scattered where the North Cascades Highway begins its climb to Washington Pass. In winter the pass closes and we become the literal end of the road — which suits the 220 kilometers of groomed nordic trail, North America's largest network, gliding right past the front doors.
Goat Wall rears 1,200 feet over the valley with multi-pitch routes and a via ferrata ten minutes away; Washington Pass's granite spires — Liberty Bell, the Early Winters — are twenty minutes up the hairpins. The Methow's singletrack and the river's cutthroat fill the sagebrush summers.
It's the quietest serious-mountain address in the state. When the larches turn in October you'll understand the whole arrangement.
— Ida