The first four days featured very limited access points and the entire route required the “North Cascades’ finest bushwhacking,” glacier travel, snowfields, scree, boulder and talus fields, and scrambling.

A little past the halfway mark, the trail leaves the forest and climbs a talus slope, offering views of Whitehorse Mountain and Three Fingers.

What impresses is an improbable blend of escarpments, ravines, windblown crags and banks of talus, all on a plateau that rises abruptly from the surrounding countryside.

Among these peaks, millennia of falling boulders have lodged in narrow canyons, creating underground spaces known as talus caves.

More than once, my front tire drifts into the talus, and I have to snap back to alertness to avoid catapulting down the scree.