The Skagit River in in northwest Washington is home to some truly beautiful dams. Built between 1921 and 1953 as part of Seattle City Light's quest to provide electricity for City of Seattle, they are in the middle of the Ross Lake National Recreation Area (surrounded by North Cascades National Park). Best of all, you can actually get close and walk across them.

Ross Dam

Ross Dam is accessible from a two mile hike right off of the North Cascades Highway. Built in a few stages between 1937 and 1948, the dam is 540 feet tall and cranks out 460MW of electricity. And you can walk over the top of it! It's spillways are sick, and the honeycomb concrete wall (necessary for the multi-stage engineering method) is pretty cool, too.

Ross Dam, spillway from above

Ross Dam, both spillways in the Skagit River

Ross Dam, North spillway and environs

Ross Dam, from the reservoir

Diablo Dam

Smaller (129MW) and older (1927-1930) than Ross Dam, Diablo Dam is still impressive. Paulo liked Diablo Dam more, I liked Ross Dam more. Fortunately, one of the spillways was open when we visited, which led to some pretty sweet shots, especially with a slightly slower shutter speed.

Diablo Dam's open spillway. Shutter speed was 1/40s, which managed the motion-blur the water coming over the spillway. It was moving fast!

Skagit River below the Diablo Dam

How to get there

Just head up to Ross Lake or Diablo Lake! Coming from Seattle, we braved Friday afternoon I-5 North traffic up to Washington State Route 20 (North Cascades Highway), and took the highway to Colonial Creek Campground, where we had a tent spot for the weekend. From there, either go west on Highway 20 to the Ross Dam Trail and hike down a couple miles to the dam. For Diablo Dam, look for the signs to the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center. It's a sketchy-looking turnoff with security cameras and a gate (sometimes open). Park on the side of the road and walk down a quarter mile.