Dec 14, 2014, Hidden Lake Area, N.Cascades Goods

Sorry I've been so delinquent in posting. Here's the down and dirty.

Snow White and the Seven Dudes left the 65th P&R at 5am on Sunday morning. We drove straight up to the trail head for Hidden Lakes. No problems with the road (other than standard trailhead fare) and no snow at the trail head.

We were hiking well before 9am, and followed the trial sto Sibley Creek for about an hour until we hit the open basin and snow around 4800'. Here we encountered pretty severe winds and could see the snow billowing off the peaks above en mass. We saw two other skiers ahead and skinned up the basin about 500' before stopping to assess our best route.

At this point, Hidden Lake Lookout was out of site and way climbers right of us. We were watching the snow coming down and were concerned about wind loading, then saw the other two skiers descending. They stopped and opted to head up climbers left toward Eldorado. We followed suit.

The other skiers kicked off a pretty sizeable wind slab right at the apex of the rollover we were ascending, roughly about 2500'. IT was about a 6-8" crown, and was enough to spook them towards mellower ground. We continued on though, as it was really the only spicy bit and it mellowed significantly after that. We saw no other avy activity in that area.

We stopped along a long, flat area (58200') to take in the spectacular views of Eldorado and the North Cascades. We could finally look back and see the Lookout as well. We opted to try and skin the ridgeline directly west, but got into some trouble as soon as we started. With the wind, there was significant loading and we kicked off another sizeable slab, with about an 8" crown. We bailed on that objective, and set out to the north down the mellow ridgeline toward Eldo.

Fun skiing on breakable crust with a few springy pockets of pow. Then an easy 45minute skin to the top of the ridge and we stood at 6,148' taking in the incredible views while enjoying some sunshine out of the wind. It was awesome.

The descent was great too, as we stuck to the west face instead of skiing back down the ridgeline and were rewarded with the best turns of the day. Then skiing was pretty straight forward back to our shoes, where we transitioned and hiked out.

Overall only got about 3000', but it was fun early season skiing to be sure.