Beautiful day at Hex Mountain—it was snowy and stormy driving through Snoqualmie Pass, but it was sunny and windy over here for most of the day! I almost regretted bringing so many layers, but it is very exposed at the top and the wind gusts were very chilly. Snow was intermittent for most of the hike so we kept putting on and taking off our microspikes, then kept them on from around 4500' to the top. Microspikes were plenty sufficient—we weren't post-holing so didn't feel snowshoes were necessary. It was easy to follow the trail when there were tracks in the snow, but there are some forks to be aware of (some weren't on my map!) so a GPS came in handy when there were no tracks.

On another note: Caltopo shows that there is a trail going down the ridge that is east of Newport Creek. We took this one on the descent and it was great until about halfway down when the trail didn't cross over the creek anywhere near where it said it did, so we continued down the "trail" and cut over the creek at 2600' to meet back with the actual Hex Mtn trail. In hindsight, shouldn't have relied on Caltopo knowing that it's not always accurate and it seemed like that side was used more for snowmobile/mountain biking so I would not recommend taking this route unless you are familiar with it or have a better source of information than we did.

A group of us hiked Hex Mtn., yesterday, in crisp, mostly sunny conditions.  The trail was well traveled, and microspikes / poles sufficed for traction, although there were a few hikers we saw in snowshoes.  There were also a few skiers.

There's patchy snow at the start of the trail, then solid snow the rest of the way up.  Right now, it's not too deep, but gaiters were nice, up high.  Earlier in the day was easier, since the sun made the snow softer & stickier in the afternoon.  At the summit, the last steep bit was difficult toward the right of the trail where there was more ice, but easier to the left with more snow to get a purchase in (but watch out for cornices).

The summit has amazing, unobstructed views, and although the wind chill was well below 0°F, it was nice to spend a few minutes there before heading down.

We started following the forest road until not too long after the start the most obvious "road" with the most tracks veered right but the correct trail was straight ahead. Eventually the tracks stopped and we figured out a route to head directly to the summit and rejoin the trail above where it leaves the forest road. Fun off trail adventure, but I recommend keeping an eye out for this so you can make your own decisions about such adventures.

Below the final ridge there is pretty minimal snow over with large gaps. If you brought spikes and snowshoes you'd probably first consider breaking out the snowshoes ~3800' along the ridge where there start to be alternating sections of wind-loaded powder and wind-scoured icy crust. We did not bring spikes so we put on snowshoes around the yellow gate for the traction. ~4700' (very close to the top) there is deeper powder that snowshoes would be very beneficial for. The last push is a steep wind-scoured slope.

I decided to go a bit insanity mode (by accident), ignoring my previous plans to go up the winter route (theoretical route referenced), I went up the summer route with some amendments, feeling out snow conditions, avoiding visible hazards (cornices), trying and be efficient with snow travel by using the ridges/forestry roads, and being careful when making the traverse over the ridge line. I tacked on a bit of meandering down the winter route, but also poked around Sasse Ridge a bit (for future potential trips with others).

I got really confused with the directions and set Google Maps to find a route to Wish Poosh Campground (silly midnight decisions). Obviously the campground is closed, but panicking about not being able to park along Salmon la Sac Rd and seeing the Sasse Mountain Trail sign, I decided to park at the Last Resort parking lot along with oodles of other folks (who turns out were snowmobiling), checked in with the folks at the store to make sure it was ok (buying some items both before and after as a token of appreciation for my parking there), then started walking towards NF-4305 on foot along the side of the groomed snowmobile trail (I figured that snowmobiles had the right of way, so I should keep to the side).

I zig zagged up NF-4305 hoping to find helpful signage, but couldn't find any (it's not present/missing, damaged by snowmobilers, or buried under the snow :/..). Thankfully I had a topo map downloaded, so I could feel out a route.

I went up a ridge between the trees, since there wasn't a clear path to the Sasse Mountain (summer route), following what I thought was an old boot path/snowmobile path. Eventually I caught up with a small snowmobile track, pushed up the groomed forestry road some more, then pushed up the ridge for efficiency/what I thought was for safety reasons [1].

After crossing a creek and pushing up the entire lower ridge, I got to the last 250'~300' and paused to observe the surroundings. I noticed along the way that there had been a some wind loading on the northwest side of the trees, so the southeast side was probably the side to be aware of on the way up. Given that there were small cornices on the lower (south) peak, I approached them a bit cautiously (even though there was a boot path that plowed through the southeastern end of the cornice >.<...).

Once up to the ridge, I decided to chance it and push for the real (north) summit. This was probably the riskiest part of the hike, given that there was a fair amount of wind loading on the south side of the ridge and it was a planar drop off of at least 35 degrees on both sides with no clear runout area, so one misstep could have resulted in me getting buried. The part that made the south/west side so risky compared to the north/east side is that it appeared stable, when in reality it wasn't: I tested out the stability with my trekking poles and they sunk in at least 1' deeper than I thought they should have when I planted them (pro-tip: always bring trekking poles in the winter, even if it's not steep for this reason ;)..!). Once I got to a wider more stable section, I walked up the remaining 25' to the real summit with relative ease. There was a small cornice on the east end of the summit, so I stayed away from the edge.

Poking around, I noticed a bootpath down the northwest side of the ridge -- turns out it was the winter route. I went down it because I wanted to check out the traverse over to Howson Peak and Sasse Mountain. I went about a quarter mile and turned around because there was a steep undisturbed section (it was at least 35 degrees), and I didn't want to wander out there by myself. I did also observe an older broken crown on the east side of the ridge, which reinforced the fact that I should be careful and return another day.

I wandered back over the ridge; the gusts had increased and the visibility had decreased greatly. Not wanting to get caught in changing conditions (originally the concern was wind slabs; it felt like it might change to storm slab concerns), I moved briskly back to the trail I took before. One thing that I did a bit different on the way down is that I tried to take the summer trail and it was surprisingly different from what I expected; it's basically following a small (stream) drainage back to the marsh where the trailhead started.

Walking down I ran into less snowmobilers than I did going up. I did however run into the cat involved with grooming the roads (kinda caught me by surprise).

The way down wasn't bad, but it was a bit tricky since I had transitioned out of my snowshoes to boots and the snow consistency after a point was like corn snow (it was easy getting up in the morning; a bit more of a challenge getting down since I couldn't do my boot ski trick). Would have been nice to have a pair of rock skis/snowboard to ride down (there are some exposed muddy/rocky areas along NF-4305)..

I did about 11 miles today and a little over 3k' I think (my Fitbit isn't 100% accurate with the elevation gain piece). All in all a very good day in the Salmon la Sac area with a new summit seen along with some awesome short distance views of the Teanaway/Stuart range (I wish it had been clearer :'(..).

1. Turns out the snow pack was super forgiving today (this might not be the case other days), but the groomed road would have been relatively safe given conditions.

Perfect day on Hex Mountain. Clear skies made for great views the whole way up. Didn't end up using my snowshoes at all. There were a few patches if you got off the beaten down path they would have been nice, but I just carried them up and back down. Just microspikes or boots was the way to go today. Trail is fully snow covered from the parking area with the exception of very small avoidable patch. Saw lots of people on skies and snowshoes coming down. Took us about 5:15 up and down, 3:30 moving time according to my Strava.