On July 4, 2026, Megan and I (Team HairNoHair) are starting up Mount Baker with the intention of not stopping, in any meaningful sense, until we have stood on all five of the highest volcanoes in Washington State and hiked every mile between them. No cars, no crew, no resupply handed through a car window. Two people, one combined head of hair, and about 460 miles of the North and Central Cascades.
Our objective is the Washington High Five: Baker, Glacier Peak, Little Tahoma, Rainier, and Adams, linked entirely on foot and self-supported. These happen to be the five highest peaks on the Bulger List and the only summits in the state that clear 10,000 feet. Add it all up and you get roughly 460 miles, 100,000 feet of climbing, and a good chunk of glacier travel.
A reasonable person might ask why these five and not the famous five Cascade volcanoes. We swapped Mount St. Helens for Little Tahoma. St. Helens is lovely, but it gave back more than 1,000 feet of summit in 1980 and no longer makes the cut, while Little Tahoma, third highest in the state, does. We are, if nothing else, deeply committed to honoring an arbitrary peak list compiled by strangers in 1976.
Our route follows in the bootprints of linkups like the Oregon Volcanic Skyline, Nolan’s 14, and the Washington 100 Highest, except with longer slogs—and more crevasses—between summits. We expect roped glacier travel on every peak, a lot of off-trail navigation, and at least one moment where one of us suggests we could have just done a 5k.
If you want to watch from the comfort of not doing this, we will be carrying a SPOT tracker. Follow the dot.
Start: Mount Baker, July 4, 2026. Finish: Mount Adams, whenever Adams allows it.
Dot watching
If you want to watch from the comfort of not doing this, we will be carrying a SPOT tracker. You can follow our progress on the embedded map below or at https://maps.findmespot.com/s/36B3. We will start in the early morning on Sat, Jul 4, 2026, at the Park Butte trailhead by Mount Baker. The route is tentative and we will most likely have to improvise and deviate from it as we progress.
