Surprise and Glacier Lakes, Surprise Mountain — Sunday, May. 31, 2015

Central Cascades > Stevens Pass - West

On Saturday we hiked up to Surprise Lake for an overnight backpacking trip. We were originally planning on going to Glacier Lake, but we found Surprise Lake pretty empty and got a great campsite. The trail is in good condition. A couple downed trees, but very easy to get over/under. There was some snow right near Surprise Lake. It wasn't hard to get over, but it was pretty muddy and you could posthole through to a puddle in a few places. In the morning, we hiked up to Glacier Lake, and finally to the summit of Surprise Mountain. Not sure if we missed the trail to Glacier Lake, but we didn't really see one. We followed a sort of game trail down to the lake though. It's about half covered in a thin layer of ice and there's patchy snow around. We didn't see any campsites, but we didn't explore much. After hiking back up to the PCT, we followed it to the snowfield that leads up to Surprise Gap. You can see the PCT switchback up and around the mountain, but we headed up the snowfield to Surprise Gap. The snow is pretty deep, and we postholed a bit near rocks, but it wasn't too bad. One guy in our group did it in trail runners with hiking poles and myself and another just had hiking boots on. Traction devices and poles would be useful, but not necessary at all. After reaching surprise gap, we bushwhacked up the mountain towards the summit and found a trail. Pro Tip. There is a trail starts immediately to right of the summit of surprise gap. It was a little hidden in the trees, but we found it on the way down. We quickly lost the trail in snow, but kept going up towards the summit and the pole of the old fire lookout. Eventually we found it and the views were amazing. Glacier Peak to the north, Mount Daniel, Mount Hinman, and Cathedral Rock to the south. It was gorgeous. It took us 2.5 hours to get up to Surprise Mountain, but only 1 to get back. We actually RAN down the snowfield doing a modified jog/slide the whole way. It was a BLAST. One guy ended up glissading in his shorts too. It wasn't steep/firm enough to slide out of control with just your hands/feet as anchors either.