Author: Alex B
General area: Longworth Lookout
Trip start date: 2025-02-07
Number of nights: 1
Last minute hut trips are becoming a bit of a tradition. Booking huts a few months in advance is all well and good, but last-minute trips have their place.
We left town sometime after 10am and we’re skinning by noon. The road to Longworth was in great shape. It is often better in the winter. Hills were graveled and plowing was on point. We parked near the trailhead at the end of the plowed road. The temperature was cold, not sure exactly but seemed to vary from negative teens to below -20. The trail to the cabin was mostly self-evident, but there were certainly some confusing sections with minimal flagging, or maybe the flagging was beneath the meter-plus of snow. We cleared a few trees from the trail using a snow-saw. Doing our little part to keep the trail open (especially for a more enjoyable ski out). We kept thinking we were nearing the ridge, and the trail kept on climbing. Finally, we made the ridge.
Once on the ridge, we checked out the weather station, staying far from the sensors. The station measures snow in three ways: The first is an ultrasonic sensor that measures the distance between the cross arm down to the snow surface, this gives you snow depth. There is also a snow pillow, this weighs the snowpack, giving a total weight (or snow water equivalent). And the last way is the standpipe. The tall cylindrical bucket up on the top of the station. This has a glycol bottom and a mineral oil cap. When rain or snow enter the standpipe, the water level rises, and the precipitation is recorded. It doesn’t freeze because of the glycol and doesn’t evaporate because of the mineral oil. Pretty cool! Hunter used to maintain these stations and gave us the guided tour!
As we traversed the ridge, temperatures were dropping, and it was nearing 4PM. All of our extremities were getting tingly, and we had to keep moving. We arrived at the decision point… the trail so far has been hard, but it’s simple terrain. The last push to the hut demanded some serious avalanche awareness. We all had beacons on, and our probes and shovels nearby. The last bit of the trail, the climb to the hut, is actually a bit spicy. You need to thread the needle between a south facing steep rock slope that is typically snow-free, and a cornice over an avalanche path on the north facing leeward slope. The climb was boiler plate hard. Hardy went first and popped a ski owing to the hard snow. We all opted to boot-pack the last 40m to the hut.
Once at the top, glad to not have dropped a ski or pole, as they could run down a heck of a long way down the mountain, we arrived at the new Longworth Lookout. We wasted no time and got inside. Firewood had been chopped and kindling prepped. We threw some fire starter in the stove with kindling and tried to warm up. The hut was -10 inside, and it was a heck of a lot colder outside. We figured even though no one had been in a while, the sun must warm it up, even on these colder days. Once we realized we were in the hut and just had to wait for the wood stove to do it’s thing, we looked at each other and smiled, we made it.
The hut was in great shape. Last time I was here this winter the windows were completely iced up. Not this time, the windows were squeaky clean. We actually skied up a car window scrapper for the hut! We were afraid that folks would start using shovels to clean off the windows… Now there’s a car scrapper (with extension no less!). We brought up an MSR stove as there is just a wood stove up there. We made super simple meals. And gathered around the woodstove to warm up. It took a few hours to get the stove up to high-teen temperatures, and then it was above 20 in the hut by bedtime.
We rolled out camping mats on the benches. The mission to the outhouse was straight forward and there are a few pairs of rubber boots up there to ease the mission. We imagined in low visibility conditions the outhouse mission could be quite a bit more treacherous. And it’s a composting toilet! So, learn to use it! Pee in the pee hole, poop in the poop hole! Hopefully we never have to replace this outhouse and it just works forever! We woke up surrounded by clouds with no visibility. No rush to get after it. Super cold and low visibility on a rocky summit… but warm by the woodstove drinking coffee and pinching ourselves about how awesome this place is.
A few of us are part of the PGBRS and helped make this hut re-build come to fruition, and so everything was extra special. That said, this is objectively a terrible place to put a hut. No water nearby in summer, no shelter from the wind, no shade, super exposed, avalanche terrain nearby. A hut would be far better positioned in the valley north of the lookout near a creek in the trees outside of the wind and the hazards. But hey, this is the only spot that we were allowed to build due to the existing historic fire lookout. In the end, the feeling of overlooking the valley with windows in all directions is pretty epic and unlike any hut in the region.
By the time we had the hut cleaned up and wood re-stocked for the next group, the clouds broke, and we started getting some epic views. We decided to tour around. Making it to the next peak northeast of the hut. On the way to the peak, Hardy found his favorite line, we’d noticed it some years ago when we started thinking about this hut replacement project. The line (a.k.a. massive avi path) is east facing and goes all the way down to Read Creek. We thought of a good name for it … Free Read. I’m sure Hardy will ski it by the end of this season but this wasn’t the trip for it.
We ripped our skins and skied down in the other direction, into the mellow bowl at the headwaters of Moxley Creek. The alpine was wind affected and unpleasant to ski, but as we got lower conditions just kept improving. This area is sort of unknown to the ski community as it is just so far from the trailhead. I’ve been here for daytrips in the past, and camped next to the lookout once in summer, but it’s so hard to justify a 9-10 km ski before you start getting some turns, and then you still need to ski out. We did another lap from the weather station ridge and just loved every second of it. By 2:30 or so we decided to start skiing out as this was a single night hut trip. Booo!
Summary thoughts about the new hut:
- Absolutely epic place to stay. 10/10 yelp review!
- The trail does need some additional flagging… so be prepared to navigate with a GPS.
- Plan enough time to head back to the trailhead if the last push to the summit hut is too dangerous due to avalanche conditions. Make sure to have avalanche training and equipment.
- Plan on some extra time to get the hut warm up! It took us 3 hours or so before removing out puffy jackets!
- Having a white gas stove with us was really nice!
- The doors are kind of intense. Make sure they latch closed! Snow drifts can accumulate in front of them… and rime ice can seal them shut… this is a hardcore hut location!
- Stay tuned… PGBRS will be doing additional renos in this summer.