North Cascades National Park Trivia
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50 free North Cascades National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This North Cascades National Park trivia quiz covers the wild 'American Alps' of northern Washington, a 1968 park that is almost entirely wilderness, holds more glaciers than any U.S. park outside Alaska, and sees fewer visitors in a year than Yellowstone gets in a busy day. It ranges across the two units split by the Skagit River dams, the turquoise water of Diablo Lake, the road-free village of Stehekin at the head of Lake Chelan, and the jagged Picket Range with peaks named Fury, Terror and Phantom. There is plenty of history and science too: the fur trader who first crossed the range in 1814, George McClellan's failed railroad survey, the dams that light Seattle, Jack Kerouac's summer on Desolation Peak, Fred Beckey's first ascents, the grizzly restoration debate and the glacier research programme that has tracked climate change here since the 1950s. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one, so it works for a car game on the North Cascades Highway or a serious park-nerd challenge. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our Mount Rainier, Olympic and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Because of their jagged, glaciated peaks, the North Cascades are nicknamed the American what?
Alps
Alps. The comparison is an old one: tourists of the 1890s thought the scenery around Lake Chelan outdid Switzerland's, and in 1892 locals proposed making it a national park.
Q 02Which Canadian province lies directly across North Cascades National Park's northern boundary?
British Columbia
British Columbia. The line between them is the 49th parallel, fixed by the 1846 Oregon Treaty after Britain and the United States had spent decades disputing the region.
Q 03North Cascades National Park lies about 100 miles from Seattle in which direction?
Northeast
Northeast. Much of the push for a park came from Seattle, where the North Cascades Conservation Council, founded in 1957, made its base and gathered signatures by the thousand.
Q 04North Cascades National Park is in which U.S. state?
Washington
Washington. The Forest Service resisted a park here for decades, because national park status meant handing the land to the rival Park Service.
Q 05Which river, dammed into a chain of reservoirs, splits North Cascades National Park into north and south units?
Skagit
Skagit. None of its three dams stands inside the park: the 1968 act put the flooded valley in a separate recreation area between the two units, so power generation could carry on.
Q 06Which senator, nicknamed 'Scoop', steered the bill creating North Cascades National Park through Congress?
Henry M. Jackson
Henry M. Jackson. A sister nicknamed him Scoop as a boy, after a comic-strip character, and the name followed him through 30 years in the Senate.
Q 07Which other national park was created on the same day as North Cascades?
Redwood
Redwood. President Johnson signed both park bills on October 2, 1968, the same day as the laws that set up the national trails and wild and scenic rivers systems.
Q 08Roughly how many glaciers does North Cascades National Park hold, the most of any U.S. park outside Alaska?
About 300
About 300. Most have shrunk dramatically over the last century, and as they go, the salmon and other life in the cold streams they feed face harder times.
Q 09Each winter, the river running through the North Cascades park complex draws hundreds of which bird of prey?
Bald eagle
Bald eagle. They gather to feed on salmon that have spawned and died, forming one of the largest winter concentrations of the birds in the lower 48 states.
Q 10Which chunky rodent of the North Cascades' alpine meadows whistles loudly to warn its colony of danger?
Hoary marmot
Hoary marmot. Nicknamed the 'whistle pig' for that shrill alarm call, it also gave a Canadian ski resort its name: Whistler was named after the marmots on its slopes.
Q 11Which oft-photographed peak towers over the northwest corner of North Cascades National Park?
Mount Shuksan
Mount Shuksan. Its best-known views are not from inside the park at all: the postcard shot is taken across Picture Lake, beside a highway in the national forest next door.
Q 12North Cascades National Park's jagged Picket Range includes peaks with which set of ominous names?
Fury, Terror and Phantom
Fury, Terror and Phantom. The range packs at least 21 peaks over 7,500 feet into about six miles, and campaigners fought for it as one of the two core areas the new park had to protect.
Q 13Roughly how many visits did North Cascades, one of America's least-visited national parks, record in 2024?
Q 21Desolation Peak was named for the bare slopes left behind in 1926 by what?
A forest fire
A forest fire. Charred wood from the burn still lies along the trail, and fire is what opened the meadows below the summit's lookout cabin.
Q 22Which village at the head of Lake Chelan can be reached only by boat, floatplane or on foot?
Stehekin
Stehekin. Its name comes from a Salishan word usually glossed as 'the way through', and the valley was a Native route over the Cascades long before any ferry.
Q 23Lake Chelan, the fjord-like lake at the North Cascades park complex's southern edge, ranks third in the United States for what?
Depth
Depth. Only Crater Lake and Lake Tahoe are deeper, and glaciers gouged its valley so far down that the lake bed lies below sea level.
About 16,000
About 16,000. The recreation area next door counted nearly a million that year, because the only highway runs through it and never enters the park itself.
Q 14Why does State Route 20, the only road across the North Cascades park complex, close every winter?
Avalanches
Avalanches. Slide chutes more than 2,000 feet long hang above the road and can bury it 20 feet deep in minutes, so the state shuts it from late autumn until spring.
Q 15Almost all of North Cascades National Park is protected as a wilderness named for which first director of the Park Service?
Stephen Mather
Stephen Mather. A borax millionaire, he paid early Park Service staff out of his own pocket and raised money from wealthy friends to buy more parkland.
Q 16More than 90 percent of the North Cascades park complex is designated wilderness, where which of these activities is banned?
Mountain biking
Mountain biking. The Wilderness Act bars mechanical transport, so bicycles keep to the roads that cars use while hikers and horse parties share the trails.
Q 17Which utility built the dams whose reservoirs separate the two units of North Cascades National Park?
Seattle City Light
Seattle City Light. It gave up plans to raise its biggest dam, which would have flooded more of a Canadian valley, under a 1984 treaty with Canada.
Q 18Diablo Lake owes its famous turquoise colour to what?
Suspended glacial flour
Suspended glacial flour. Glaciers above the lake grind bedrock into a powder so fine that it hangs in the water instead of sinking, scattering sunlight into that milky blue-green.
Q 19Which is the largest of the three reservoirs that separate the two units of North Cascades National Park?
Ross Lake
Ross Lake. It runs about 23 miles north and on across the Canadian border, and the one road that reaches its upper end comes in from the Canadian side.
Q 20Which Beat writer spent the summer of 1956 manning the lookout cabin on Desolation Peak?
Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac. The lonely weeks fed The Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels, and he came down a year before On the Road made him famous.
Q 24Which side of North Cascades National Park receives far more rain and snow?
The west side
The west side. Pacific storms shed most of their rain and snow climbing the western slopes, leaving the far side in a rain shadow where summer highs reach the 90s.
Q 25Which future Civil War general surveyed the North Cascades for a railroad in 1853 and found them too steep?
George B. McClellan
George B. McClellan. Then a young Army engineer on the Pacific Railroad surveys, he judged the range too steep and said any line would have to run well to the south.
Q 26For thousands of years, people quarried Hozomeen chert near North Cascades National Park to make what?
Stone tools
Stone tools. The glassy rock flakes to a razor edge, and Hozomeen, the peak it is named for, has a Salish name said to mean 'sharp like a knife'.
Q 27Ancient travellers left traces thousands of years old at which popular day-hike pass above Marblemount?
Cascade Pass
Cascade Pass. Native travellers used it for thousands of years as a route between the western lowlands and the valley that drains to Lake Chelan, and archaeologists have dug their camps.
Q 28When finished in 1930, Diablo Dam in the North Cascades briefly held which world record?
Tallest dam
Tallest dam. At 389 feet it led the world, yet it stood idle for six years: money troubles held up its powerhouse, and no electricity flowed until 1936.
Q 29Which mountaineer, famed for hundreds of first ascents, wrote the three-volume Cascade Alpine Guide?
Fred Beckey
Fred Beckey. He made the first ascent of the park's Forbidden Peak in 1940 while still a teenager, and went on climbing new routes for seven decades.
Q 30Which climbing rule applies throughout North Cascades National Park?
No new fixed anchors
No new fixed anchors. Drilling bolts into the rock is barred, so climbers rely on gear they can remove, keeping routes as raw as when they were first climbed.