Alpine Scramble - Thunder Mountain Lakes

Great weekend up until it decided to envelope us into a cold cold cloud of snow and 20 plus winds. Over 60’ on Saturday and by 7am next day it was 23’ wind chill! Trail was in great shape minus few muddy slippery parts once off the main trail from Surprise Gap. Nav across the boulders was decent with many cairns. Lots of other campers at the lakes but we were able to find spacious sections apart from others out towards NE of lakefront property. We also had a decent campsite with a stone wall blocking some of the winds. We did a successful scramble up Nimbus on Sat night and watched the sunset and afterwards had some hot pho soup while relaxing in somewhat decent weather conditions. We woke at 1am with zero visibility cold fog surrounding us. By 5am weather was very very cold with gusty winds and we had a total whiteout and about 1/4” snow cover over everything plus ice on rocks. We decided to bail on Thunder Peak scramble and focus on retreating safely which was difficult up until we got out of the boulder fields. Such a stark difference between the days! Weather never got better at 6k feet but sun broke out with nice weather once we were down to Trapp Lake and ate breakfast. Upon returning to the cars though it started to snow/hail again! Crazy crazy weather - be advised anyone still planning fall trips there - take microspikes and be well versed in gps as there isn’t a lot of visible trees or landmarks in the whiteout!