The Cascade Mountains Are Featured In the Movie Top Gun: Maverick

Fun fact: in the movie "Top Gun: Maverick", the main flying scenes (aka: the mission) were filmed here in WA State in the Cascade Mountains.

I saw a commment on a hiking forum that mentioned one of the mountains was Hibox, and so I started looking at the stills from the video and was wondering if it was possible to identify that particular mountain from the movie, so I started looking for clues.

Here are three video stillsi from that short video clip I linked to:

Judging from that tiny clip above (1:48..1:56), those planes are flying from the north and heading S/SE (the lake is Kachess Lake), as indicated on the map directly below.

(Note: All images are clickable for a larger version)

Here are three clues that should help:

1. There's nothing to the south of Hibox peak. It's a massive river valley (from Rachael Lake) called "Box Canyon" (and I think you can observe this if you watch the short clips a few times).
2. Another clue is the location of Katchess lake, which is argubably the most helpful clue.
3. And the last one is a rockline formation that I understand to be called "Three Queens". I summitted Hibox in 2023 and took some photos of rocky ridge. Directly below is a photo of what it looks like from the summit.

And if you look at this topo map, you can see the direction I'm looking in when I took that photo, along with the peak and the ridgeline. It's about a 30 degree angle, N/NE.

(Incidentally, that map also shows (1) to the NE of Hibox is the Mineral Creek river valley (which is massive) and (2) directly to the south of Hibox is Box Canyon, which is also massive.)

And here's what Katchess looks like from the peak:

And here's a topo map of Katchess. The only part you can see is the constricted part that's S/SE (and follows a river valley). The other lakes (Keechelus and Cle Elum are both blocked by mountains, as is most of Katchess).

And last but not least, from the summit, if you look north, there's a huge drop-off into a river valley below (Mineral Creek), which looks like so:

So putting it together, and yes, this is a total guess, here's Hibox from the video still:

Another fun fact: Hibox has no switchbacks .. it's a hike essentially straight up the south side of the mountain, and the elevation gain is 3,754' over 3.55m (it's 7.1m round trip). That is a very steep hike right there and it took me 5 hours round-trip (which is long for only 7.1m).