Big Snow Mountain
5/9/2026
Eric, Mike, and I were in the market for a nice, big, daytrip, and after a few ideas were tossed around, we settled upon Big Snow Mountain – a prominent peak in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.
There are several ways that climbers can approach Big Snow, but the two main approaches are either via Dingford Creek, or Hardscrabble Lakes - both of which begin at the Dingford Creek Trailhead. Because it was a low snow year and we wanted to make it a day trip, we opted to bike the 7 or so miles on the Middle Fork Road and take the Hardscrabble Lakes approach.
No matter how many times I drive the Goldmeyer road to the Dingford trailhead, I am always amazed at how bad the road is. There’s no way a 6-mile stretch of road can take an hour to drive, right? But I’m proven wrong every time, I should really know better by now!
Eric’s bike rack took a bit of a beating on the back of his car as we navigated some particularly deep ruts in the road, each time emitting a spine-tingling screeching sound that made us all cringe. Somehow, there was hardly any visible damage, which was a relief to all. We ended up parking about a mile short of the official trailhead when confronted with a particularly precipitous washed-out section of road. It was better to bike an extra mile than risk ripping the bike rack off the car!
We sorted some gear and hopped on our bikes, and quickly made it to the official trailhead, where we were surprised to see several cars. I had just repaired the front tire on my ancient bike and was pleased to see it holding up well.
Right past the trailhead we crossed over the roaring Dingford Creek falls and began to settle into the biking groove. There was one quarter-mile long section of washout with big cobblestones littering the road that was impossible to bike, but aside from that it was more or less smooth sailing to Goldmeyer. Biking saved us a lot of time on this part.
Past Goldmeyer the grade of the road steepened, and I found myself pushing my bike quite often. Mike and Eric had better success on their e-bikes but still had to push on some of the steeper sections. I rolled into the “trailhead” not too much longer after them. My legs felt slightly wobbly, but much better than if I had just hiked 7.9 miles.
We chained our bikes to some trees and quickly set off. The Hardscrabble boot path is easy to miss if you’re not looking for it, but once you’re on it, it is well-defined. We gained elevation quickly, but honestly, I expected the route to the lakes to be steeper. It wasn’t long before we hit patchy snow and we found ourselves at the lake shore after about 1.4 miles of hiking.
I was impressed by Hardscrabble Lake - it is situated in a rugged basin below Big Snow. It's a beautiful place where you could probably find relative solitude even on the busiest of summer weekends.
Traversing around the west side of the lake was a bit tricky, because the boulder-field was partly melted, but some areas were still clinging to snow. We were very careful not to punch through. On the north side of the lake there were some beautiful streams to cross, and then we started picking our way up to the upper lake.
Since it was early season, I chose bushwacky route through the trees, before eventually deciding that it would be easier to rock hop through the boulder field to climber’s left of us. That proved to be the right decision, and it got us up to the upper lake, which was still frozen over.
Snow was much more consistent here, but we still ran into one class 3 scramble section on some exposed rocks above the upper lake. At about 5000’ we officially reached consistent snow and stopped to put crampons on before Mike led up to the col above us. The snow was unconsolidated and thick, which made for hard work.
At the col, we were treated to some awesome views. The broad treeless ridge that leads up to the summit of Big Snow stretched out before us, looking like a big glacier under these conditions. The only problem was that the summit still seemed like a long way off. With the snow the way it was, we looked at the time and did some calculations. It would be doable but might make for a later day than anticipated. After some deliberation, we decided that we were ok with that and pressed forward.
We took turns slogging through the heavy snow, and the distance to the summit closed quicker than we anticipated. It wasn’t too long before we crested the final ridge and navigated the last steep slope to the summit.
This was a very satisfying summit to reach. It provides a great vantage point to see a lot of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. We took some time naming peaks and relaxing, before turning around and reversing course. It was a lot easier on the way down to just let gravity do the work instead of fighting through the heavy, wet snow.
We reached the lower lake again and filtered water at an awesome pool on one of the inlet creeks. The hike out was uneventful, and we were soon back at our bikes.
The bike out was fast and fun! It was definitely a more pleasant way of getting back to the cars than a monotonous road walk. For what my old bike lacks in shocks, or really any bells and whistles, it does surprisingly great on downhills, so it was fun to pretend I was a mountain biker for the day.
We got back to the cars very satisfied with a full day in the mountains and prepared ourselves for a few more bone-rattling screeches from the bike rack on the drive out.
Final stats: 15.8 miles of biking / 8.14 miles on foot / 4060 feet of gain on foot
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