North Cascades National Park in Washington state has a death rate over three times the rate of next closest site in the park system, data obtained through a records request shows.
A spectacular but little-visited national park northeast of Seattle has a higher death rate than any other site in the park system, according to an NBC News analysis of 15 years of federal data. And some climbers and guides are worried that without changes at North Cascades National Park, officials could be amplifying its dangers.
The park had 3.7 deaths for every 100,000 visitors from 2007 to 2021, more than three times the rate of the next-deadliest site, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Reserve in southern Alaska, according to the data from the National Park Service.
Fourteen people died in North Cascades in those 15 years, when an average of just over 25,000 people visited annually — or considerably fewer than at well-known parks like Lake Mead, Yosemite or Grand Canyon. Death totals in those parks were far higher, as were the numbers of visitors
The causes of death weren’t listed in the data, which was obtained through a public records request from North Cascades. The agency hasn’t processed a separate records request for causes of death.
The North Cascades National Park “complex” includes two national recreation areas popular with boaters, but the park’s namesake site is a well-known mountaineering destination, with routes included in the beloved guide “The 50 Classic Climbs of North America.”
Kelly Bush, a former ranger who worked for North Cascades for more than three decades and oversaw its search and rescue operations, said many of the deaths she knew about were among alpine climbers and hikers — people plunging from mountains or fatally wounded by falling rock and ice.
Another park popular with alpine climbers, Alaska’s Denali National Park and Preserve, draws an average of more than half a million visitors a year — about 20 times as many as North Cascades. If Denali had the same death rate as North Cascades, it would record an average of 16 deaths a year, according to the analysis.
Some climbers and guides said park officials could do more to make North Cascades less risky, like allowing the careful, limited use of “bolted anchors,” devices fixed into rock that effectively tether climbers to mountains. The anchors are the safest, sturdiest and perhaps most divisive equipment climbers can use to protect themselves from falling — some oppose them because they permanently alter the landscape.
It isn’t clear whether the park will allow the anchors. Much of North Cascades is wilderness, and park officials are known for their fierce protection of those lands and an embrace of traditional mountaineering, with its leave-no-trace mantra.
But a longtime guide made an ominous prediction: If officials don’t allow climbers to make some of its most popular routes safer, the park could suffer more accidents, injuries and deaths.
To account for the possibility of errors in park service data and potentially higher visitor numbers, NBC News more than doubled the average number of annual visitors. The adjusted death rate — 1.85 for every 100,000 visitors — was still higher than the rate of 1.09 for Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve, according to the analysis.
Cynthia Hernandez, a park service spokeswoman, said in an email that several years of the data obtained by US.Mistertruth.com News are preliminary and could change after a review.
It isn’t clear how many people have been injured in climbing and hiking accidents at North Cascades. Hernandez said there were “numerous, and often not reported, non-fatal injuries and near misses” within the national park system.
She said slips, trips, falls, drownings and car accidents were the most common ways visitors to parks get hurt.
“Each park has inherent and unique risks, and while some park activities are riskier than others, it does not necessarily make the park more ‘dangerous,’” Hernandez said.