[Jim Dockery]

Three of us headed up Hidden Lake Peak Monday morning. John & I stayed the night in the lookout while Jens had to get home that night so he tagged the summit and skied out. It was cold in the morning leaving the car, and the snow was frozen hard when we put on skins and ski crampons (absolutely necessary) after crossing the stream into the open gully.

Icy skining

The snow improved once up on the long traverse over to the lookout, but there were still some icy spots on any windblown ridges.

Traversing Hidden Lk Pk.

Gettin' there

Traversing over to the easy final ridge to the hut

The last climb to the hut was quite firm so John booted it, but my skin/crampon combo was working better so I managed to skin all the way.

Bootin' up a steep bit

Last bit to hut

We hadn't set any speed records on our way up so we decided not to take an evening run since the snow wasn't very good and we wanted to dry our inner boots in the last sun. It was cool seeing Jens on the summit and admiring his tracks as the sun set.

Look for Jen's orange jacket on the summit.

We enjoyed the sunset, then a bit of a breeze got us back in the hut for dinner and a few hands of rummy before bed.

Moonrise over Sahale

Sunset on Hidden Lake Peak - note ski tracks off summit

The hut

Sunset

Great hut

There was no hurry in the morning since we wanted the sun to warm the snow a bit, esp. on the ski down from the hut.

Dawn

Sunrise Over North Cascades

Hidden Lk Pk

Mt. Baker & Shuksan

Skiing from hut

Jens made the run from the summit look pretty darn good, but we figured that was just him (he's a pretty solid skier). We had all day though and had to check it out even if it turned out to be crap. Climbing up we encounter variable snow, protected grooves of old powder, wind blown plates of sastrugi, and bulges of ice.

Last bit to summit

We were very surprised to find the snow off the summit was pretty darn good old powder preserved with an easy to slice wind crust. We even had fun with our big packs!

John looks for good snow

There it is!

We dropped about 1000 ft., left the packs and headed back up for another wonderful lap. Skiing Hidden Lake Peak from j d on Vimeo. We were glad to find the lower gully had softened a good bit by the time we hit it so that wasn't as bad as I'd thought it would be.

Side slipping the trail out

Looking for a nice campout we found some of our best skiing of this dismal season!

[PorcupinePhobia]

Awesome photo set, as usual

[olderthanIusedtobe]

Nice pics, it's cool seeing some of those peaks in winter conditions.

[Magellan]

Great story.

[Shred]

Nice one, Boys!

[leahrobinson65]

I've been wanting to do this hike in the winter for quite some time now...I'm not super great at touring, so I think this would be too difficult for me in terms of skiin down (I can go uphill all day ), but was wondering if it might be doable with microspokes or crampons/ice axe? Thanks for any and all help!

[puzzlr]

Looks like an awesome trip. A place I have yet to visit.