Ross Lake Boat Camping ’25

This summer, my brother and his family joined Kaylyn and me for another camping adventure at Ross Lake, right in the heart of the North Cascades. If you’ve been following along, you might remember our trips to Ross Lake in 2022 and 2024. We’ve decided to carry this on into a yearly tradition.

We bagged a single group campsite perched right on the lake, complete with our own dock and private bathroom. With two rental motorboats for the week, we were able to explore far beyond camp. Our site was about an hour’s boat ride (roughly 10 miles) up from the lake resort, and Ross Lake stretches another 20 miles north, crossing the Canadian border. The weather couldn’t have been better with warm, sunny days that invited daily swims and long floats on the calm, clear water. Evenings brought camp-stove dinners under a canopy of stars, the air carrying just enough coolness to remind us we were deep in the mountains.

One of the highlights was an adventure with my brother to Desolation Peak, a 25-minute boat ride north to the trailhead, then a punishing 4.5-mile climb with 4,500 feet of elevation gain. At the summit, the storied fire lookout tower stood against the sky, the same one where Jack Kerouac spent an inspired summer in the 1950s. The trail nearly broke my body, but the sunset that followed was one of the best of my life. We made it back to camp in the dark, the hum of the boat engine our soundtrack to recovery. Kaylyn greeted me on the dock with a camp chair after I took a quick dip in the lake to wash off the trial.

This trip gave me some of my favorite photos I’ve ever captured. They are priceless to me but now also available as prints and digital downloads in my Etsy shop. Each one is a piece of a week spent fully immersed in one of the most beautiful places I know.

Here’s to finding beauty and discovery around every bend.