Most Remote Point in Baker Wilderness Complex

Most Remote Point in Baker Wilderness Complex

Sept 27, 2026

38 miles, 10kft gain, 6am – 6:30pm

I’m interested in visiting remote places in the Washington, and one objective measure of remoteness is distance from the nearest road or location where a road can legally be built. Roads are not legally allowed in areas federally designated as wilderness, of which Washington has 31. Many of these wilderness areas border each other, though, and a collection of bordering wilderness areas is referred to as a wilderness complex.

There are six major wilderness complexes in Washington – Pasayten, Rainier, Olympic, Alpine Lakes, Glacier Peak, and Baker. To identify the most remote point in each wilderness complex, the largest possible circle is inscribed within the complex and the center of the circle is the point fartherst from any border. That is the remote point. Greg Slayden on peakbagger.com calculated the exact coordinates of each of these remote points, and listed them here: https://peakbagger.com/report/Report.aspx?r=w. This list containts all remote points in the contiguous US at least 4 miles from the nearest wilderness boundary, of which there are 50.

I started visiting these remote points in 2018 on Mt. Rainier, and by 2022 had visited five of them. I’ve listed reports for those here:

Rainier (May 2018)
Pasayten (Oct 2020)
Alpine Lakes (Oct 2021)
Glacier Peak (Oct 2021)
Olympic (Sept 2022)

Interestingly, all six remote points in Washington are in very scenic locations. None are in the middle of a forest. The Rainier remote point is the least remote, and is located on a glacier on the north side of Rainier between Liberty Ridge and Ptarmigan Ridge. I visited this in 2018 on my approach to climbing Ptarmigan Ridge.

The Pasayten remote point is located on the edge of an unnamed tarn at the edge of treeline near Ptarmigan Peak. I attempted to reach the point in early October 2020, but bailed after discovering the approach trail, Lease Creek, was long-abandoned and full of deadfall. I returned a few weeks later to try again, but by then the approach was covered in snow. I ended up doing a 55-mile single-push hike over 36 hours breaking trail most of the way and bushwhacking over challenging deadfall. That may be the most challenging remote point, at least in the conditions and route I took.

The Alpine Lakes remote point is likely the funnest, and is located above Lake Rowena on the south side of Mt Hinman. Matthew and I visited this point in October 2021 and used packrafts to cross several lakes on the way in and out to increase fun. This was a 35-mile round trip hike/paddle.

The Glacier Peak remote point is located on the east side of Glacier Peak near the edge of treeline on a cliff overlooking Chocolate Creek. I accessed that from the Trinity trailhead and it was a 48 mile hike with some bushwhacking.

The most remote point in the whole state of Washington is in the Olympic wilderness complex, and is located on the edge of a glacier on the north side of Mt Queets. I accessed that point from the North Fork Quinalt trailhead and hiked and bushwhacked in for a 54 mile round trip. Note that the Pasayten remote point was 1 mile farther of a trip, but that’s because I hiked it late season and used a snow-free trailhead I could drive to. In optimal conditions the Olympic remote point is still the greatest distance from a wilderness boundary.

By fall 2026 I finally got around to visiting the last remote point in Washington. The remote point of the Baker Wilderness Complex is located in what was historically the middle of the Whatcom Glacier, on the north edge of the Pickets in North Cascades National Park. The glacier has melted out considerably in recent years, though, so now the remote point is located on the edge in a pile of seracs. It is only about 1 mile from the nearest trail at Whatcom Pass, so access is not very challenging. Though, Whatcom Pass is about 18 miles on trail from the nearest trailhead at Hannegan Pass.

I’ve tended to save these remote point objectives for shoulder seasons when summits might have bad conditions but remote points that aren’t summits can still be below snow line and less conditions-dependent. In November 2023 I planned to visit the Baker remote point, but was thwarted but bad snow conditions. So I decided to return when conditions were better. In the ensuing years there was a fire in the Brush Creek approach from the Chilliwack River, and that complicated access.

By early September, 2026, the Brush Creek trail was re-opened and freshly cleared by trail crew all the way to Whatcom Pass. So conditions seemed perfect to tag the point. I like to avoid dealing with red tape of getting overnight permits for North Cascades National Park, and the best way to avoid red tape is to do the trip as a day trip. That does not require a permit. It would be kind of a long day mileage-wise at 38 miles, but 36 of those miles would be on good, freshly-cleared trail. So I planned to jog those miles if possible.

Sunday morning I left my apartment in Issaquah at 3am and was hiking up the Hannegan Pass trailhead by 6am. The parking lot was very full, but I only saw one person on the trail. I made good time jogging and hiking up to the pass, then ran down to the Chilliwack River. There was a trail crew camped at the US Cabin Camp, and interestingly I saw a helicopter come in that morning long-lining supplies that it dropped off at their camp.

I crossed the neat cable car across the river, then hiked up the Brush Creek trail. There was a trail crew working on a bridge there and they acted very surprised to see me. They said they hadn’t seen any other hikers that far in for a while. Around 11:30am I reached Whatcom Pass, then followed a climbers trail south along the base of the north ridge of Whatcom Peak. I had to bushwhack a bit near the start but then reached nice open talus. Unfortunately it was covered in fresh snow from Friday.

I put on micro spikes and gaiters and made my way over to the edge of the dying Whatcom Glacier. I kicked my way up some steep snow in a location I’d identified from satellite images was not glacier, just slab covered in snow. by about 6200ft I reached a narrowing chasm of ice walls ending at a pile of jumbled up seracs at the head. Interestingly, that was where the remote point was.

I made it there around 12:30pm, and built a small rock cairn on top of the lowest serac. I bet the fresh snow will stay there through the winter, since it didn’t really see any sun.  I admired the awesome view down the Little Beaver Creek, with the interesting contrast of fresh snow at my level and bright red and yellow leaves in the valley below.

By 1pm I headed back down, following my steps in the snow and hiking back to Whatcom Pass. From there I mostly jogged back down, stopping briefly to chat with a ranger and the trail crew working on a bridge. That trail is now in excellent shape thanks to all their hard work.

I made good time running back down to the Chilliwack Lake, then hiking back up to Hannegan Pass. By 6:30pm I made it back to the car and headed home.

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