Golden Horn and Liberty Bell Roadless Areas

Index to the other Roadless areas in the Western Okanogan National Forest

Selected campfire stories from the Golden Horn Roadless area from Lost and Forgotten - A Trail Guide to Roadless Area Hikes and Vistas in Western Okanogan County

Selected campfire stories from the Liberty Bell Roadless area from Lost and Forgotten - A Trail Guide to Roadless Area Hikes and Vistas in Western Okanogan County

Golden Horn - Liberty Bell, RAs 358 & 445 north part

Golden Horn is the largest roadless area in the western Okanogan, but it is easily accessed via Highway 20 and the Hart's Pass road on either side. The heart of the area is protected by its rugged topography although there are a few choice trails through here, most notably the Pacific Crest Trail between Canada and Mexico. Golden Horn roadless area is famous to travelers coming over North Cross Highway 20, as the road skirts this area between Canyon Creek and Mazama, a distance of about 40 miles.

Everyone who has crossed Highway 20 over Washington Pass is familiar with the colorful orange granite that gives the rocks here their name, the Golden Horn Batholith, and everyone in the state has made at least one pilgrimage to Hart's Pass and Slate Peak at the eastern margin of this area, where the brown sedimentary rocks are embedded with marine shells. In between, the mixing zones of these different rock types enticed early homesteaders with flecks of color, offering a slim chance to escape the simple farming life in the Methow Valley. Only a few mines made it rich, and all have since fallen into decline. The Barron Mine at Hart's Pass has diminished its activity; the Azurite in Mill Creek has but a few tenacious miners probing beneath the tailings, East Creek Mine ekes out its existence, and the big Anacortes Claims and North American Mines (the latter probably still shown as private land on your map, but recently bought for public conservation) were never more than venture capital scams. It is a safe bet to say that these beautiful mountains owe much of their current state of preservation to the fact that with the exception of the Azurite and Barron claims, few mines ever became very large, although the Azurite Mine is probably worthy of superfund status.

The vegetation of Golden Horn roadless area defies description, for one passes from the easternmost sagebrush-steppe near Mazama quickly through a mixture of conifer types and avalanche chutes, shrubfields, old growth, diverse subalpine types, on up to alpine ice and talus. Going down the other side alongside Granite Creek, the vegetation becomes progressively more west-side, which is to say wet-side, with western hemlock and Douglas fir forests becoming more prevalent nearer to Ross Lake and the North Cascades National Park.

Liberty Bell roadless area is cut-off from the Golden Horn roadless area by intervening Highway 20. The highway corridor is managed as a National Scenic Highway. Like Golden Horn, Liberty Bell is famous to travelers coming over Highway 20, and it is becoming more so because of the scenic fame of its mountain namesake, which is also a prized climbing and extreme skiing destination.

The Liberty Bell roadless area is home to North Gardner Mountain, highest peak in Okanogan County at 8956 feet, and sitting astride the Ross Lake-Jack Mountain fault, a major fault system delineating the Methow Block of sedimentary rocks from the Chelan rocks to the west. The fault crosses North Gardner Mountain on its west flanks, where it separates the Golden Horn Batholith from the marine sedimentary rocks at the summit. Sedimentary mountains over 8000 feet are uncommon in the North Cascades. In nearby areas such as the summit of Gardner Mountain, these same sediments are a brick red color, reflecting their origin from volcanic ash falling in a shallow marine environment, approximately 100 million years ago. These geological aspects of the area played an important part in its early discovery, for wherever the Golden Horn Batholith crops up against sedimentary rock, old mines are sure to be found.

The vegetation of Liberty Bell roadless area is very complex, and like Golden Horn, it passes from the easternmost sagebrush-steppe through a mixture of young and old conifer types and avalanche chutes, shrubfields, diverse subalpine forests, on up to alpine ice and talus. Liberty Bell continues further south in the Wolf Creek drainage, where available precipitation is lighter, and the vegetation is dominated by Douglas fir and ponderosa pine, with frequent breaks in the canopy filled in by sagebrush-steppe.

Roadless Area Map of this area (data from Pacific Biodiversity Institute).