Hidden Lake Peaks Zone, North Cascades June 18-20, 2021
Summertime still seemed very distant when the annual mid-March backcountry camping permit lottery kicked off for North Cascades National Park. I had participated in the lottery twice before: in 2019, we obtained a permit for Easy Pass and had a fabulous classic backpacking trip there over the 4th of July weekend. In 2020, due to a Cascade River Road closure, our permit was canceled.
This year, inspired by our Turns All Year quest, I was mapping out ski mountaineering trips while working on the application. The permit application asks for four possible itineraries and offers an additional fifth "wild card" option. You can apply for specific backpacking campsites or for a permit to camp in what the park terms a cross country zone, an area without established campsites, trails, or infrastructure, where you must camp half a mile away from the nearest trail on a durable surface such as bare dirt or snow, and follow other Leave No Trace principles to reduce your impact.
After much pleasurable deliberation and study of the map I submitted an application with 4 cross country zone itineraries plus I checked the box for the wild card "luck of the draw" option. My thinking was that a permit in one of those zones would facilitate skiing or, if the conditions weren't favorable, would at least be an interesting alpine camping experience. I was also curious what the wild card option would yield. Here are the zones I chose:
- Sulphide Glacier Cross Country Zone I
- Triad Cross Country Zone
- Sahale Glacier Camp
- Pelton Basin Camp
After a two-month wait, on May 15, 2021, the email announcing our lottery results appeared in my inbox. We were awarded a permit to camp in the Triad Cross Country zone for June 18-20, 2021. The park posts the real-time availability of the campsites and cross country zones online. (I noted later that some of the cross country zones -- particularly those which, like the Triad Zone, aren't on the well-established or most popular route to a classic North Cascades climb-- seem to nearly always have permits available. Getting a walk-up permit for one of those zones is probably a safe bet.)
I've been excited to explore this area on skis ever since I did a trail run to Hidden Lake Lookout on August 2, 2020. The area has stunning views and wide open terrain. The plan was to locate a suitable campsite in the Triad zone and set up camp on Friday, June 18; explore the area and ski on Saturday, June 19; then exit on Sunday, June 20. With plenty of daylight, we were able to proceed fairly leisurely on Friday: we drove to Marblemount, waited in line to to pick up our permit, then drove our Land Rover Discovery to the trailhead, 15 miles from Marblemount, about a 30 minute drive. Forest Service Road 1540 which leads to this trailhead is pretty rough, too rough for a passenger car or sedan.
The first .75 miles of the Hidden Lake trail was snow-free. There were intermittent snow patches from .75 miles to about .9 miles, where the trail exits the woods onto the wide open avalanche slope that plunges down from Sibley Pass. The trail crisscrosses this avalanche slope before it finally takes a sharp bend to climber's right and wends south. The trail then proceeds along a bench towards the saddle overlooking Hidden Lake. From this saddle, when there's no snow, a hiker would then turn sharply right, skirting along a steep slope, before embarking on the final rock scramble to the lookout itself.
During our trip the Hidden Lake trail was challenging: littered with lots of tree branches and debris, several fallen logs including one that is hard to get around and multiple flowing streams of meltwater that add water crossings or flow down the rocky trail itself. Some of these streams were difficult to cross without getting your feet wet. Such is the price to ski in June in the North Cascades... We soldiered on, carrying our heavy loads.
We exited the woods to find ourselves at the toe of a massive pile of avalanche debris. Unmistakable and an awesome reminder of the power of avalanches. Stashing our approach shoes, we switched to ski boots. We stomped through a soup of mud and water and slushy snow and pushed through some brushy vegetation and slide alder to cross the east fork of Sibley Creek. There was water flowing in multiple places underneath the snow cover as well as rotten snow bridges, the typical hazards of this time of year.
Gradually the snow became more continuous though it contained a mix of rocks, tree fragments and a strikingly large amount of dirt. Jim wondered if a glide avalanche had occurred recently, ripping down to ground level, and added in the dirt.
We continued skinning and picking our way up and reached an expanse of gently sun-cupped snow sprinkled with the occasional tree fragment and rocks. Occasionally there would be a patch of snow resembling a coral reef, chunks of avalanche debris not yet smoothed out by the melt/freeze cycle. The snow cover was deep on the avalanche path but the valley wall on the north side of the slope was mostly bare of snow.
We spotted a large waterfall flowing off a large treed knob roughly a third of the way up- we steered climber's left of that knob as a cliff blocked our ascent on the right. From there we ascended to Sibley Pass in a beeline, just dodging the obvious obstacles. After about 4 hours of effort we set up camp on a high point on the ridge in the Triad cross-country zone as per our national park permit. The ridgeline was rather windy with some rocky outcroppings offering shelter. Plenty of melting water around, no need to melt snow on our stoves. We enjoyed a gorgeous gold and orange sunset then rosy alpenglow as well as the long summer evening -- on the cusp of the solstice there was daylight until about 10 pm.
The next day, June 19, dawned clear but then the weather became progressively more overcast, gray, windy, and cold, with dark clouds rushing in all along the horizon threatening precipitation. We skied down from the ridge and traversed along the bench roughly parallel to the summer trail and got some ski turns in along the way. We reached the saddle overlooking Hidden Lake and surveyed the slopes we’d have to cross to reach the lookout. Steep, completely snow covered and with large cornices looming above, the slopes were not welcoming and we thought it would be necessary to have a rope for protection to access the lookout safely. We had crampons and ice axes in addition to our ski gear and we still decided it was not worth the risk to try to make it to the lookout. If you fell you’d slide a very long ways or if the cornices collapsed then you’d be seriously exposed and the snow could sweep you down to the lake below.
After a photo stop to admire frozen Hidden Lake we then tried at one point to scramble up to the ridge to see if we could travel northwards on the ridge's spine and then drop in... but carrying skis and rock scrambling was awkward and felt sketchy to me at least. So we renounced that plan and skied around more instead.
We noted one or 2 recent avalanche sloughs that were possibly human-triggered as well as significant melt and shrinking of the snowpack each day - rocks moving, tent stakes melting out and needing to be re-staked, that sort of thing. The snow platform under our tent dwindled dramatically each day.
We only saw a small number of people each day: just one other tent with an unknown number of campers on the approach to Hidden Lake. No other parties were camping so we enjoyed the sunsets in solitude perched high on the ridge.
On Sunday, June 20, the sunshine returned and we enjoyed a pleasant morning in camp before packing up and skiing down to the trail where we transitioned to hiking and carrying out our skis. As we skied down around 11 am conditions were ideal for skiing. Jim and I took a wrong turn by the treed knob, tempted by the wide open path on skier's left which seemed to connect to lower slopes but in fact turned into a cliff and ended near the waterfall we'd spotted on Friday's climb. We had to bootpack back up and then descend skier's right of that knob. All too soon we had reached the end of the snow and transitioned to carrying skis out to the trailhead before a celebratory lunch in Marblemount.
I'm already hoping to return to this beautiful area next year. With the benefit of having already visited the area, on a future visit I would simply camp on national forest land along the summer trail to the lookout. Easy access to skiing and less climbing to and from camp.
- Strava data from our ascent to camp on Friday, June 18, 2021
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