Ditto for the northern lights that supposedly made an appearance above the mist.

And the "fresh" snow was a few days old and had developed an inch-deep icy crust.

Still, it was a Thursday night trip with TNAB and that's always worth gearing up. Plus, I was hiking with someone new. A guy named Bryan from the online hiking community that had become interested in nightshoeing when I posted a picture last season.

I met Bryan at Truck Town and we drove up to the Pass in the trusty 'onda. Tokul was content to curl up on the seat in the back. The car did great on the roads, which were mostly bare and dry, but had a bit of trouble in the Hyak parking lot. Our route required we walk back toward the freeway so when the snow and ice got too nasty I turned around and parked near the clear pavement.

Mark and Don showed up a few minutes later. There was a minor bit of confusion that found them at the other end of the lot, but that was cleared up and soon we were walking through a residential area toward the "trailhead." If online trip reports were to be believed there was a trail to Nordic Pass off a switchback in the road near the Hyak parking lot. With a copy of the report in hand we walked up the streets with snowshoes and skis on our backs.

It turns out there is a trail and it's pretty well marked. It helps that the tracks left by the last group hadn't been snowed over so it was easy to get off the street and put on our 'shoes and skis. (Don opted for cross-country skis with skins rather than snowshoes.) We had a small amount of difficulty crossing the creek and turned left instead of right once across, but we lost only a little time before we were on track.

The Nordic Pass trail is an unofficial trail marked with blue diamonds on the trees. It climbs gradually up the hill toward Hyak Lake. We had an easy time of following the trench and the diamonds as the route wound through the trees, across groomed runs, and along an old railroad grade.

Even with a bit of route-finding and gear problems we made it to Hyak Lake in about an hour and forty minutes. Not great, certainly, but not too bad. TNAB shoots for about two hours on the outbound leg so we had time to pop over to Rockdale Lake. Rather than break new trail (the Nordic Pass trail doesn't go to Rockdale) we followed the groomed cross country trails. (Previous trips (1 2) to Hyak and Rockdale Lakes have been entirely on groomed trails.)

Interestingly, one stretch wasn't groomed, but it was clearly the way to go both from looking at the map and consulting my vast memory banks that could never, ever steer me wrong. (Sounds like the setup for a disaster, huh?) The ungroomed trail met up with a groomed trail under the power lines and the final walk to the lake was no problem. (HA! Fooled you.)

We stood for a few minutes looking down into the Rockdale basin and decided we had no real good reason to go down there. Instead, we had some hot chocolate and I put out Tokul's mat to allow her to get off the snow and lie down. Turns out she really didn't care about lying down and certainly didn't think the mat was anything special.

The walk out was nothing special either. We retraced our steps and were back at the cars in about an hour. Don had some problems with his skis in the deep trench and commented that he felt like he had brought a knife to a gun fight.

At the cars Tokul mistakenly jumped into the trunk of the 'onda without prompting, but before I could get the camera out she realized it wasn't where she thought she should be and jumped back out.

The Nordic Pass trail is definitely a better route to Hyak Lake if the goal is the experience. In fresh snow finding the route might be a bit of a challenge, but now that I've done it once I could probably do it again. And next time I'll continue on to Nordic Pass. The trail passes Frog Lake (unvisited by me) and offers a shot up Mt. Catherine above Nordic Pass itself.

Total distance was about 3.6 miles with 1,000 feet of gain.