North Cascades National Park
In the northern regions of Washington state, some of the least-visited and most beautiful mountains in the U.S. rise dramatically from the landscape under untainted dark skies. An alpine wilderness rife with dramatic peaks, lush forests, placid lakes, gushing waterfalls, curious wildlife and more. We will explore by day and night, visiting and photographing different regions of this peaceful, special place.
Workshop Details
July 27-August 2, 2025 — Sold Out, Join Waitlist Below
This is a 7-night, 7-day workshop. Your adventure begins with a ferry ride on the morning of July 27, and ends after a final shoot on the night of August 2. We will leave the final shoot location on the morning of August 3.
$3,095. Register below.
Skill level
Intermediate+. Participants should have a firm grasp of the basic principles of photography and of their cameras, and have a comfortable understanding of night photography fundamentals.
Group size
14, with 2 instructors — 7:1 ratio
NPS website
Our workshop mission is to explore every U.S. national park. As with all our Passport Series locations, it may be years (if ever) before we return to any specific park. If you have a dream of making epic long exposures at night at North Cascades, we hope you join us.
Workshop Leaders
Registration
Hoping to get a spot? Sign up below for our no-fee waitlist.
| • Deposit of $600 is required to reserve your spot at the workshop. |
| • Balance of $2,045 is due on April 28, 2025. → Pay balance here. |
| • You may choose the “Pay in Full” ticket if you desire to pay all at once. |
| • Last day for a cancellation request is April 27, 2025. (see cancellation and refund policy) |
| • The workshop fee does not include lodging, most food, airfare, entrance fees, or car transportation to or during the workshop. |
| • The workshop fee does include some meals, and ferry transportation to and from Stehekin. |
| • Lodging will be booked for the group and invoiced separately. |
The North Cascades Experience
Washington state has three national parks. Two of them (Olympic and Mount Rainier) are among the most visited parks in the U.S. The third is North Cascades. And hardly anyone goes there. In 2023, it was actually the seventh least visited national park in the country.
That means three things for us:
It’s a well-kept secret. Photographers love well-kept secrets.
It’s relatively remote, which means the dark skies are dark.
We won’t be bumping elbows with a lot of other people—especially at night, when we’re unlikely to see anyone else at all.
North Cascades contains what is undeniably some of the premier mountain scenery in the United States. The peaks are jagged, roughly hewn by millennia of glacial activity and volcanic eruptions. The lakes are vast and beautiful, reflecting the surrounding alpine scenery in morning and evening calm. And the nights? Wow. Sparkling. Serene. Spectacular.
North Cascades is both easy and challenging to travel in. Part of it is national recreation area, with roads that make travel easy and activities that make vacations memorable. And parts of it are remote, vast stretches of untamed wilderness. We will enjoy the perks of the former while also exploring the edges of the latter.
We will visit the lakes, beginning with a two-hour passenger-ferry ride on Lake Chelan to the tiny enclave of Stehekin, where we will lodge and photograph for two nights. Then we’ll venture to the center of the park, where we will photograph along the main road. From there we’ll head into the Mount Baker Wilderness, where we’ll explore the trails around Artist Point, with their breathtaking views of the park’s Mount Shuksan.
Each night we will photograph in twilight and starlight, with a couple of quarter-moonsets toward the end, enjoying the precious nights of the Pacific Northwest.
What You Should Know
This workshop caters to knowledgeable photographers with an intermediate or higher skill set. Participants should have a firm grasp of the basic principles of photography and of their cameras, and have a comfortable understanding of night photography fundamentals. We will be happy to offer advice and answer questions about both day and night photography, but the focus of the formal education will be on more advanced techniques such as panoramas and foreground/sky blends.
If you would like to attend this workshop but are unsure whether you have adequate night photography skills, we can offer pre-workshop tutoring to get you ready for your adventure with us. Alternatively or additionally, a few of us have written books that may be productive pre-workshop reads.
What You Will Learn
We hope to push you to step outside your comfort zone—to test the limits of what you and your camera can do.
TOPICS COVERED WILL INCLUDE:
capturing epic Milky Way photos
using PhotoPills to plan a Milky Way shot
creating star trails in both twilight and dark skies
how to plan, shoot and process a panorama
how to photograph and blend twilight and starlight foregrounds with dark-sky backgrounds
and more …
This workshop will have both field and classroom instruction, but mostly the former, as we will have daytime activities, as well as travel days.
Night Conditions
Logistics & General Info
Travel
You are responsible for arranging and paying for your own transportation.
You’ll probably want to fly into the Seattle airport, grab a cup of coffee at Espresso Vivace, shore up on supplies at the REI mothership store, and then drive the 120 miles to the park. But there are other options.
Nearby Airports:
Bellingham, Washington (BLI) — 1.5 hours from the park (limited flight options)
Seattle (SEA) — 2.5 hours
Vancouver (YVR) — 3 hours
Rental Car
You will need a rental car, though note that for 2 nights it will be parked at the secure lot of the ferry at Lake Chelan.
There is no need for four-wheel-drive.
We will be changing our hotel base every two days (see below), and the drive between each is about three hours.
If you are interested in carpooling or sharing a rental car, let us know and we will try to connect you with another attendee looking for the same.
Lodging & Food
The experience will be a bit of a road trip—we’ll be changing our base every two days in order to maximize the photography opportunities the park offers. We will be using four lodging locations over the course of the workshop:
a single night near or in Chelan to be in place for the morning ferry ride to Stehekin
two nights at a lodge in Stehekin
two nights at a ranch outside the eastern entrance to the park
three nights in a chalet in the Mount Baker Wilderness
Lodging
Due to the complex nature of booking the logistics, we will handle reservations and will invoice for that you separately.
You are not required to stay at the official workshop lodging, though not doing so could be challenging. There aren’t a lot of places to stay, the ones that are there are spread out, and they book up early.
Food
We’ll arrange some of the meals, and you’ll be on your own for some meals.
In the beginning of the week we’ll host a welcome dinner at the Stehekin Valley Ranch. Stehekin also has a restaurant at the lodge, and an excellent bakery that’s open for breakfast and lunch.
Hot brunch and box dinners will be catered in Mazama.
The chalet at Artist Point will include breakfast and an early dinner.
Access to groceries and restaurants is limited, but they’re there.
We encourage eating two meals per day—a good breakfast and a great late lunch.
When on the night shoots, you may wish to bring snack food or a sandwich and plenty of water.
Weather
We’ll be in the mountains in summer, so in one word: variable. We could have daytime temperatures as high as the low 90s and nighttime temperatures as low as the 30s.
We might get rain, we might get lightning, we might get fog—we might even get wildfire smoke. But we chose this time of year because it’s when we’re most likely to have the clearest skies at the best shoot locations. Whatever happens, we’ll be ready with different night photography techniques to make the best imagery possible for different conditions.
Recommended Attire
Shorts or light pants and short-sleeve shirts for daytime, pants and long-sleeve shirts for night.
Swimming in Lake Chelan is permitted at Stehkin. If you’d like to partake, bring a swimsuit.
A sweatshirt and medium-weight jacket will likely be useful at night, and a base layer might not be a waste of packing space.
Bring a rain jacket and rain pants, just in case.
Comfortable and protective shoes are recommended for getting around. There won’t be long hikes, but we always recommend quality trail shoes or hiking boots.
Exertion Level
The exertion level of this workshop is Easy. (See more about our classifications.)
No vigorous activity will be required during the workshop, but please consider your physical abilities prior to registering. There won’t be any long hikes, but we will be doing short hikes on unmaintained trails, and you should be comfortable carrying your own equipment over uneven ground in the dark.
Considerations
IMPORTANT: We encourage reading our FAQs page for more information about skill and gear requirements, and other information that pertains to all our workshops.
If you have questions, please contact us—we're happy to talk it over with you.
Making mountain memories …
“I ‘stretched out’ in my sleeping bag in the passenger seat of my rental car—a nice, small, budget-friendly sedan. I can’t say I was comfortable, but I slept.”
My first visit to North Cascades National Park was in 2016, right after spending time in Seattle and Olympic National Park filming my segments of our CreativeLive course. The visit was something of a reward to myself—I’d been to Washington several times in the previous few years and months, including four trips to Olympic and two to Mount Rainier, but never to the state’s third national park. After a busy summer with lots of deadlines, I decided to take a few days to head north into the Cascades and shoot for just me.
Of the things I knew about the park before visiting, two were most prominent:
that is has amazing mountain landscapes, and that
relatively speaking, hardly anyone goes to see it
When driving into the park for that first time, the former was definitely proven true. And the latter? Definitely false.
What?! Where did all these people come from? I hadn’t bothered to make camping reservations, and every site in the park was spoken for. At least I’d have the park to myself at night though.
Wrong again. Each time I drove to another spot to shoot, there were people everywhere—walking in the dark, even snuggled into sleeping bags on the ground.
It turned out I had picked one of the few “busy” times to be there. The Perseid Meteor Shower was coinciding with a new moon—on a weekend—and the local knowledge led people into the park to enjoy the show.
With nowhere to sleep (even the few hotels and inns were sold out), I “stretched out” in my sleeping bag in the passenger seat of my rental car—a nice, small, budget-friendly sedan. I can’t say I was comfortable, but I slept. In a few one- and two-hour increments. I did this for two nights, and by the third, even though some campsites had opened up, it started to feel like part of the experience for me. I asked a ranger at Mount Baker if “camping” in the car was OK while out for night photography, and with a wink and a nod he gave me his blessing.
Really, I was not comfortable. I was exhausted. I was groggy. But I wasn’t miserable. In fact, I was far from experiencing any displeasure from the experience. To this day, it remains one of my fondest national park trip memories. I can’t be unhappy in such a pretty, pretty place.
