Home > Trip Reports > May 17, Hawkins Mountain

May 17, Hawkins Mountain

5/17/14
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Posted by radka on 5/18/14 2:21pm
The spring weather in the PNW has been following a pattern that, after several weeks, has become quite familiar: sunny work week followed by a crappy weekend. This allows for great predictability - one week ago, it was sunny so that means it was Monday. Two days ago I looked out of
the window in the morning and it looked like rain. I didn't need to check the calendar. I knew it was Saturday. Seems like others have
noticed this pattern: http://www.komonews.com/weather/blogs/scott

Anyway. Since it was a weekend, we were headed east, as is customary, this time to check out Hawkins Mtn that Kenji pointed out a couple of
weeks ago when we were on Earl. Hawkins looked like a nice peak from Earl so we, that is Kenji, David, Aki and I were curious to check it out.

Hawkins is accessed from the Salmon La Sac side and the road was driveable all the way to the TH. We started hiking on an old road before we headed steeply up towards the ridge.

It was Aki's lucky day because she found a bone of a dead animal that she ate super quickly without any of us having a chance to intervene,
shortly after which she proceeded to give Kenji a kiss. Ha! I love doggie love!

Hawkins is a very interestingly looking mountain. With some imagination, one could even think that it's a volcano as its chutes look kinda like Nisqually. Sort of. What if this is a new Washington volcano and nobody knew about it!

Awesome views from the summit of the whole Stuart Range, Mt Daniel, Snoqualmie Peaks etc. Now the best part - a 2000-foot run from the summit on beautiful open slopes, with consistent angle. What a beautiful tour! Aki was chasing pin wheels and was having a ball, humans were chasing the tips of their skis and having loads of fun, the weather was nice, there was nobody around, it was so nice.

Kenji and David, being the master navigators that they are, figured a way back that was super straightforward and took us just slightly below our car. Total round trip was some 6 miles.


Almost like a volcano!


Cloud action:








High five and high tail!
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Good one, Radka.

Did you ascend the ridge between Camp creek and Big Boulder creek?

The only time I've been up there was in the summer, when I drove my Toyota up the south fork Fortune creek, past Gallagher Head lake and into the south basin of Hawkins. I remember thinking that it would make for great ski terrain. I believe it's one of the few spots in this state where one can drive above 6000ft. Some solid 4-wheelin, for sure!

-S


author=Norseman link=topic=31734.msg133257#msg133257 date=1400477451">
Did you ascend the ridge between Camp creek and Big Boulder creek?

-Yes, that's the ridge.  Easy hike for the first ~1000', then snow.

A few of my pixs; more here

good thing it wasn't very hot:


next destination in distance:


our photographer in action:

Nice!  Hawkins is our go-to spot when there's "just way too much pow" in January and February.  There's almost 4k' of relief from the road on the Camp Creek side, and no snomos because of access difficulties!  If you invest in a cheap old snomo, this is could be your huckleberry in winter.


How is the rest of the road up to Hyas Lakes TH? Did it look snowy from your perch? (hard to tell in the B&W photo)

We were curious too, but could not see the road, and didn't check it out.

Btw, More of Radka's pix here.

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2014-05-18 21:21:06