Saturday 2-22 I and Wendy did Hough, aka Hough and Puff.  It lived up to it's name for sure.  This peak is one of the more remote peaks in the Dix range, and really is the worst peak to orphan as there is no quick and easy way to get there.  I orphaned it 2 years ago, and this was my third attempt to get it for winter credit.

Started the day at the Elk Lake winter lot and the road to the summer lot was clear and not slippery.  I had my spikes on just in case, but didn't bother with them on the way out.  When we reached the summer lot, we were excited to see someone had broken the trail!  We assumed only as far as Slide Brook, and the group that came upon us as we were getting our snowshoes on confirmed they broke out to there Friday.  So, the hike in to Slide Brook leanto was pretty good.

From there, the plan was to go up Lillian Brook to Hough, and possibly Dix.  The trail past the leanto was not broken, nor were any of the trails up to the peak.  Trail breaking the Hunters Pass trail to the herd path was not bad, 6 to 8 inches of sinking on each step, but the trail was quite obvious.  Going up Lillian brook, we meandered a little bit at the start, but then happened to find a bit of pink flagging and the herd path was quite obvious up to the 2 brook crossings about 0.6 miles in.  Just after we crossed them, a nice young man came up from behind and did the route finding and initial trail breaking the rest of the way up.  We can't thank him enough for taking that on.

So, that second "half" of Lillian brook wasn't too bad.  Adding our track to the successful routes he found, the trail was becoming obvious.  I will say this though, the steep section (about 0.4 to 0.1 miles before the col) was difficult to get up.  My shoes were sinking easily a foot or more in many places.  The snow also changed when we started the real climb, from a relatively soft down low to a crunchy couple inches of snow on top of soft snow.  We were ecstatic when we got to the col because we were almost done, but even though it's only a couple tenths of a mile and a few hundred feet of elevation, Hough is still not easy.

At this point we're a few feet above the ground, and the path chosen was rather tight with a lot of branches to the face.  The small ledge you climb up approaching the false summit was a little tricky in the shoes, especially going down it, and the wind  just hit hard when we got there.  Then as you cross the ridge, the trail was only a snowshoe's width with a handy tree top to help you get by.  Finally we got to the top and were happy to see the peak marker was visible.... by about a foot.

Now the good news is we ran into 10 other people that were going to go down Lillian Brook.  7 of them went down before us, and the herd path out was starting to have a nice trench formed.  The steep sections of both Hough and Lillian Brook provided for some really good butt slides down.  So, at this point, I would say the Lillian Brook herd path is very passable and obvious.  I know most of the people we met had done at least Macomb and South, and I know at least 4 people went to Grace and back from South, so that should be relatively good to follow too.