Hidden Lake Lookout — Sunday, Sep. 22, 2024

Cascade Pass road is open, despite the lit up sign right after leaving Marblemount.

Road up to the trailhead is pretty bad, but we managed to make it up there in our minivan (Honda Odyssey). Would strongly recommend a higher clearance vehicle. Two other cars at the trailhead at 9am, one a party that had stayed at the lookout overnight, another a hiker that we met as we were hiking up.

Trail is mostly fine. Lots of mushrooms in the forest section, then a couple of overgrown sections as you enter the valley. Couple of switchbacks have steep, sandy, slidey sections, but they're over quickly. No snow on the trail at all.

We had the lookout to ourselves, enjoyed lunch there. Clouds were coming in so we only got intermittent views of the tops of most of the peaks to the north.

Got some cool drone shots here (the lookout is just outside the National Park boundary, and there was no-one else to annoy).

After lunch we checked out the picturesque toilet that's down the south ridge, then headed back to the saddle. Recovered a blue Hidden Wild hammock on the scree field below that looks like it's seen better days.

From the saddle we followed faint trails and slabs up to the top of Hidden Peak. There's no one true way, but we found sticking to the top of the ridge was usually easier. No really hard moves, just lots of rock hopping.

It started misting as we headed back down so we put on rain jackets but it never actually started raining. Hike out took a long time, we got back to the parking lot at 5:30pm.