Cutthroat Lake — Wednesday, Apr. 23, 2025

HWY 20 opened Tuesday 4/22/25, so we decided to do a cross country ski tour towards Cutthroat Lake from HWY 20 on Wednesday 4/23/2025.  No issues driving HWY 20, except for some rockfall West of Diablo, and a deer grazing deicer off of the middle lane stripe East of Colonial Creek.

Got a late start from Everett, and arrived at pullout to Cutthroat around 11:30 AM.  Met someone coming out on skis, using an alpenstock instead of poles.  He reported that snow on the road from HWY 20 to trailhead was icy in the morning, but it had softened by the time we arrived.  I could see that an alpenstock might be handy for controlling speed when skiing down an icy road!  He said that he had crossed the footbridge, but couldn't locate the trail to the lake on the other side.

Skied the mile up the road to the trailhead with no problems.  Snow was nicely consolidated, with about a half inch of softened snow on top.  There were some small mounds / moguls on the snow left behind by snowmobiles.

Toilet was open, and stocked with toilet paper.

There was a snow moat about hip deep down to the bridge deck, and a narrow pile of snow down the center of the bridge.  It was difficult to climb out of the moat on the bridge back up onto the snow.

After wandering around a bit, we found the trail to Cutthroat lake.  The trail was fully covered with a few feet of snow.  The trail makes a few switchbacks near the bridge, then makes a long upward traverse toward the lake.  Look for wide corridors through the trees, with depressions in the snow.  It looked like someone had towed a pulk or sled behind skis or snowshoes up the trail in the past, which made route finding easier.  There were icy crusty patches of snow in the shade of the trees.  In some spots we teetered on high spots of snow between snow moats on either side of the trail.

We stopped for lunch at an open area caused by a long ago avalanche, and admired the views.  This was a bit over a mile from the trailhead.

I was concerned about skiing back down the crusty icy snow that was in the shade of the trees, so we headed back to the highway.  The snow had softened a bit by then, but skiing on narrow strips of snow between some of the moats was a bit uncomfortable.

On the way back, I almost fell off the end of the bridge.  One of the steps that I'd kicked into the snow collapsed, and I fell over sideways.  I was able to grab a bridge support, arresting my fall.

If you do the trip, beware that you will want skis or snowshoes.  Otherwise you'll posthole through the snow all day.

I recommend the trip if you're comfortable with snow travel.