Stephen Mather Wilderness

The United States Congress designated the Stephen Mather Wilderness in 1988 and it now has a total of 634,614 acres. All of this wilderness is located in Washington and is managed by the National Park Service. The Stephen Mather Wilderness is bordered by the Pasayten Wilderness to the northeast, the Mount Baker Wilderness to the northwest, the Noisy-Diobsud Wilderness to the west, the Glacier Peak Wilderness to the southwest, and the Lake Chelan-Sawtooth Wilderness to the southeast.  The North Cascades National Park "Complex" consists of three units: 505,000-acre North Cascades National Park, which boasts 504,614 acres of designated Wilderness; 117,600-acre Ross Lake National Recreation Area, a slim piece of land just east of the park that has 74,000 acres of designated Wilderness; and 62,000-acre Lake Chelan National Recreation Area, at the southeast corner of the park, with 56,000 acres of designated Wilderness.  These three components are combined into Stephen Mather Wilderness, a huge and tremendously rugged piece of earth with jagged glaciated peaks above narrow stream drainages and densely forested U-shaped valleys. The snowfall, which may exceed your imagination in the virtually inaccessible heights, stays on the ground for a long, long time.