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Trip Report    

Winter Scramble - Lichtenberg Mountain

Good snowshoe outing with a little too much road walking.

Robert Moran Robert Moran
February 16, 2026
  • Road suitable for all vehicles

  • Forest road is still mostly covered in snow.  We used snowshoes from 4000'+. Snow was in surprisingly good condition for the warm winter we've been having and was 6-8" of powder over a rain crust (crust thickness varied by aspect/elevation and led to some postholing).

11 miles, 2700 feet, and 8 hours car to car with a pretty substantial break at the summit. Sunny in the morning with clouds rolling in around noon. Avy danger was Low below 6000' and luckily Lichtenberg tops out at 5850'. We primarily followed this gpx track and used the route that stays on the forest road until Smithbrook Trailhead.

Departed Smithbrook Parking Lot off Hwy 2 at 8:30am. We took the forest road for 3 miles and then turned left after the Smithbrook Trailhead. Ascended 600 feet directly south to a gully in the ridge before Lichtenwasser lake. The gully was fairly steep so we switched to ice axes and put helmets on at this point.

The lake was still frozen (kind of surprising given the warm winter) and we crossed to the southwest corner of the lake, then ascended the remaining ~1100' WSW to the summit. We stayed more towards the north side of the bowl and encountered some boulder fields and more steep snow than was really necessary - you could probably go straight up the middle of the bowl instead and avoid a lot of this. We found a gap in the cornices around 5750' and stepped over onto the south ridge of Lichtenberg and booted the rest of the way to the summit.

Overall a good day in the mountains with great views of Baker, Sloan, the Monte Cristos, and Glacier Peak trying to poke out of the clouds. We saw one group of snowmobilers and a few groups of backcountry skiers. I'm only giving this 4 stars because everyone in the group was sick of the forest road by the time we made it back to the cars.

Looking back down into the bowl from the summit - note the cornices on the right:IMG_9850.jpg

Just a few of the mountain views from the top:IMG_9844.jpg