With uncertainty over road conditions this early in the season, we decided to do Hoodoo as a two day trip and anticipated a long road walk. We were able to drive bare road until 2700', leaving about 5.5 miles of road walking to the Libby Lake Trailhead. The lower half of the road walk was mostly snow free, and the upper half was mostly slush (snowshoes were very helpful to avoid postholing), but there were intermittent patches of dirt all the way to the trailhead. Overall the road walk wasn't as bad as we had expected!
The road near where we parked
Lots of the lower road was bare
Libby Lake Trailhead
Soon after the trailhead the snow disappeared, and the first mile of trail was almost completely melted out. We donned snowshoes at 5200' and took them off again at around 5800' where the trail traverses a large patch of recently burned forest. This section was completely melted out and was a mess of blowdown; it's going to be quite a project to get this all cleaned up.
Putting the snowshoes to good use
Bare trail at ~5000'
Wilderness boundary
Blowdown city
Above the burned area conditions quickly became very winter-like. We broke trail to a nice camp at 7300', following the tracks of a skier who had been there earlier that day.
Setting up the tent in a snow squall
Monday morning we headed straight up to Hoodoo's S ridge, and scrambled boulders/kicked steps to the summit. We enjoyed beautiful clear views for a while until clouds started building, then headed down to camp. Our exit hike was in intermittent snow showers. Overall this was a fun trip, and I'd say this is a pretty good time to visit the Chelan Sawtooths if you don't mind a little road walking. It's beautiful up there in the snow.
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