Hidden Lake Lookout, Winter 2021
I’d been vying to ski the Hidden Lake Lookout in the North Cascades nearly the entire time I’ve lived in the PNW. Sneakily tucked away off of Cascade River Road near Marblemount, this peak offers some of the best views the Cascades have to offer. On a clear day, you can see Koma Kulshan, Shuksan, the Canadian Cascades, and the entire Boston Basin with peaks like Forbidden, Boston, Sahale, Eldorado, and Johannesberg all seemingly within grasp. The weather for this weekend was shaping up to be beautiful, and avalanche danger was rated as Moderate by NWAC, so I convinced my friends Ross, Mike, and Sam to join.
The approach in the Winter follows a gravel Summer road, so we ended up skinning on flat and mild terrain for roughly 3 miles before we even started the actual uphill off-trail section, but the grade quickly ramps up after leaving the road. The first section consisted mostly of skinning over frozen chucks of snow dropped from the tree tops, which made the intial ascent slow, but we quickly ascended nearly four thousand feet, and popped out of the trees near six thousand feet.
No, this was not a ski tour for my birthday… but it could have been! The Birthday Tour is another classic PNW route on the east side of the North Cascades off of Highway 20 near Washington Pass. This is a relatively quick tour, with a mild amount of elevation gain, but some pretty enjoyable downhill bits.
