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Mount Dickerman has been one of my favorite day hikes for years now and I try to make the hike at least once a year. It’s a hike with pretty much everything you could ask for, varied micro-climates, perfect mileage for a good workout and a great view from the top. You start out with switchbacks for the first half of the hikes, working your way up through a nice open forest with large Douglas Fir trees. Eventually you break out onto a ridge and the terrain changes to more of a sub-alpine feel with wide open spaces and small evergreens. There is a lot of huckleberry picking potential later in the summer, although that’s too much hassle for me. The top of the mountain isn’t a sharp peak like some of the other surrounding peaks but still provides an almost 360 view of the country with many of the North Cascade mountains such as Mt Baker and Glacier Peak in view.
The full hike (out and back) is ~9 miles and almost 4,000 feet of elevation gain so it’s definitely a workout. On the day my friend Brandon and I hiked the forecast high was to be in the mid-80’s. We got a fairly early start and were on the trail by 8am. It was absolutely perfect. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot when we arrived and we passed everyone on the trail on our way up so by the time we reached the peak we had the place to ourselves. There were more people coming up as we went back down the mountain but even at 1pm when we got back to the truck there were probably less than a half dozen cars in the parking lot. This was the 5th of July so I thought more people would have had the day off and would be out but I guess not. It’s a large parking lot that serves two trailheads, Mount Dickerman and Mount Forgotten. On a nice Saturday the lot would normally be completely full with 50 or 60 cars. I much prefer it as it was on Wednesday!
