Hidden Lake Trail

I’m not sure if nostalgia is the right word. It wasn’t quite the feeling that “I’d been there before”, but more of “This is familiar. This feels right.”

As the view sank in, the breeze picked up: the fresh alpine air that feels like the antithesis to every city breath.

We took off our crampons, scrambled off the snowfield to a rock outcrop, and ate lunch looking out onto the striking, craggy, snowy Cascades: Triad and Eldorado on the north end of the horizon, Forbidden dominating the skyline, Boston and Johannesburg flanking the south.

We made it about halfway up the trail to Hidden Lakes lookout when we decided to bail on the last 2 miles of steep snowfields, and instead gain the ridge to a small saddle between two highpoints above Sibley Creek, which raged alongside the trail down the mountain towards the Cascade River.

The night before we prepared one of the best camp dinners I’ve had a in a while — couscous with tuna, peppers, arugula, olives, sun dried tomatoes, and copious amounts of roasted garlic— while a doe walked through our campsite all evening as if we didn’t exist.

The cool mossy lower forests, the swollen early-season creeks, the snow-covered cirque, the marmots, the birds, the scale and immensity of the mountains, the sagging cornices, the heat of the sun interlaced with the cool breeze… it was all coming together. “This is familiar. This feels right.”