Red Mountain Retreat
Red Mountain Retreat — exterior, bridge, stone patio

Maple Falls, Washington

The Story of
Red Mountain

A family property. A homecoming. A place built for people to come back together.

The Property

Some places carry weight.
Not the heavy kind.

Six thousand square feet of mountain lodge on 25 private acres in Maple Falls, Washington, at the foot of Mt. Baker. Forest, trails, a treehouse sauna in the canopy, a great room with a Steinway grand piano and a stone fireplace, and the particular quiet that only comes when the nearest road is several acres away.

But before it was Red Mountain Retreat, it was simply home.

Red Mountain Retreat sign and deer — forest path

How It Started

The first remote worker

Mike's father moved the family from Bellevue to the Maple Falls property decades ago — not as a vacation property, but as a permanent home. He was a patent attorney who figured out how to work remotely before anyone used that phrase. Before reliable internet. Before cell phones. Before the infrastructure existed to make it easy.

In those days, just getting a private phone line required a fight. First the fight for a non-party line. Then a second line. Then one of the earliest satellite dishes in the region — because if you were going to live in the mountains and work from them, you were going to solve the connectivity problem yourself.

It was farm-scale patience applied to a career — the slow, methodical work of building something in a place most people wouldn't have chosen.

Red Mountain Retreat — the lodge from the front

Mike Hughes

He left. Then he came back.

Mike grew up on the property and, like many people who grow up somewhere wild and formative, he left.

He played football at the University of Idaho from 1991 to 1995 — never missed a practice. Earned a mechanical engineering degree. Passed the U.S. Patent Bar. Went to law school. Practiced patent law.

Then came a different kind of move: out of trading hours for dollars and into building something. Mike became an avid competitive pistol shooter, reached the top of USPSA's Production Division rankings, and in 2010 founded Next Level Training — the company behind the SIRT training pistol, a dry-fire training system now used by law enforcement, military, and civilian shooters around the world.

He and Angie lived in the Northwest, California, North Carolina. They traveled. They built. They grew. Life has a way of circling home.

Red Mountain Retreat — gathering on the property

Angie Hughes

From law to ministry

Mike met Angie in law school. They married in 1998 and built a life together across multiple states, careers, and chapters — the kind of partnership that gets tested by distance and change and comes out stronger for it.

Angie practiced law and eventually moved away from it. She is now in the process of earning her ministry license, with active plans for women's educational ministry studies and retreats at Red Mountain Retreat.

That is not a small thing for a property like this. It means these 25 acres have a longer purpose in mind — not just a vacation rental, but a place for women's groups, faith communities, and retreat gatherings to come and do the deeper work.

The Homecoming

Not just to own it.
To restore it.

Mike and Angie came back to the Red Mountain property with a specific intention: to turn the house Mike grew up in into a place of gathering — a retreat property, a short-term rental, and eventually a home base for the retreats and training events they have been building toward for years.

They now live in another log home on the adjacent property. Close enough to steward the land and the guest experience. Far enough to give guests the privacy and space they came for.

The renovation has been unhurried and intentional — premium mattresses and luxury linens in every room, the treehouse sauna built in the forest canopy, the billiard room with its turquoise pool table and stone fireplace. Every choice made with the question: what would make a group of fourteen people feel like they really arrived?

Church Mountain · 6,100 ft

Where they renewed their vows

A short drive from the lodge, Church Mountain rises to 6,100 feet. The hike is 8.5 miles round trip with 3,750 feet of elevation gain — serious by any measure.

Mike and Angie renewed their vows at the top. After the climb. At elevation. With a view earned step by step.

There is something fitting about that choice. Marriage, like this property, is not something you inherit and walk away from. It is something you climb back toward — with effort, with intention, and with someone who chose the same summit.

Mike and Angie at Church Mountain summit
Church Mountain vow renewal

What Guests Notice

Three things people can't quite explain

The Water

Guests almost always comment on it. The water comes from a deep well, and it tastes the way good water is supposed to taste — cold, clean, and completely different from what comes out of a city tap. It is a small detail that becomes a daily pleasure.

The Air

There is something about the air here. Guests feel it quickly but find it hard to describe — richer, somehow. Maybe it is the trees. Maybe it is the mountain humidity. Maybe it is simply the nervous system exhaling after days of ambient noise it forgot it was carrying. People consistently notice it.

The Energy

Red Mountain Retreat seems to attract people who are not just trying to escape, but trying to reconnect. With family. With purpose. With rest. With themselves. The land holds that intention — or maybe it just reflects back what people bring to it when the conditions are right.

Forest at Red Mountain Retreat

An Invitation

On the door of Mike and Angie's residence, a few hundred feet from the lodge, there is a sign.

"You are responsible for the energy you bring into this place."

It is not a warning. It is an invitation. Come with openness. Come with gratitude. Come ready to rest, breathe, laugh, repair, and grow.

Red Mountain Retreat is not just a rental. It is a place to come back together.

Come see what they built.

Seven bedrooms, 25 acres, and a mountain that waits for everyone who shows up.

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