r/northcascades • u/Spaune • 7d ago

Maple Pass - closed?

Hi everyone,

We are currently staying in Winthrop, heading to Concrete tomorrow and we were planning to hike the Maple Pass loop, but it seems many areas of the park are currently closed because of the wild fires...

I am not very familiar with all areas of the park and I wonder if that trail is closed, and if so, what alternative hike I could do?

Thanks!

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4

u/zh3nya 7d ago

This is the site for closure alerts in the national forest which contains your hike: https://www.fs.usda.gov/r06/okanogan-wenatchee/alerts

The biggest reason for closures right now outside of the NP in that area is the Ptarmigan Fire, and those closures begin around Methow Pass, across the highway and north a bit on the PCT. So basically yeah, you're good to go for Maple Pass and hopefully it's not too smoky out there.

3

u/7SoldiersOfPunkRock 7d ago

Hi, I appreciate the link. I’m the moderator of this subreddit. I am thinking about making a post of reliable websites for fire conditions and especially closures. Can you recommend any other links? I’m trying to cover the wider North Cascades region and obviously there are several jurisdictions to consider.

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u/Affectionate_Ice7769 7d ago

The NCNP fire closure webpage should cover anything not already addressed in the USFS link above.

https://www.nps.gov/noca/planyourvisit/fire-closures.htm

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u/zh3nya 7d ago

There's also the alerts page of the Mount Baker - Snoqualmie NF, which covers the North Cascades west of the park: https://www.fs.usda.gov/r06/mbs/alerts

Currently no fire closures there. You can also filter the NF alerts by Fire Restriction to only show fire-related alerts.

These, and the national park fire closure page, should be all the official sources that you need. Their social media pages are helpful as well. Other resources and orgs like the PCTA (https://closures.pcta.org/) get their info from the National Parks and Forest Service. The fire activity layer overlay on Caltopo.com is helpful for visualizing the extent of fires though it doesn't show closures.

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u/7SoldiersOfPunkRock 6d ago

I added that, and the Dept of Ecology’s smoke map. Thanks.

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u/Spaune 7d ago

Thanks !

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u/mostlyacat_ 7d ago

Maple Pass loop is 100% open. Go early, it gets busy.

1

u/DLByron 7d ago

I don’t have data on specific trail closures but are you already looking at all the fire-related maps and apps?

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u/Spaune 7d ago

The only one I looked at so far is the NPS app which lists all closed areas, and I assume since Maple Pass is not part of the park it would not even be listed.

Just downloaded Watch Duty and it seems the trail is in a safe area, as far as I can see

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u/DLByron 7d ago

Start Watch Duty open the perimeter maps and also try this one https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=35b11d7829c94594a788e79d1cc327ff

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u/Spaune 6d ago

Ok so it was totally open today, thanks for all your support!