Load entire NextGEN gallery from single thumbnail?

I’m using Alex Rabe’s NextGEN Gallery in a lot of client sites as a centralized image repository, and am finding I often need to load an entire gallery into a lightbox (invoked via a single thumbnail), without displaying more than a single thumbnail on page.

Thus, I could have a series of four thumbnails on a page, each thumbnail opening a different set of pictures in a lightbox when clicked.

Any idea how I could do this? Thanks.

Output all images of each gallery in your HTML. Use an anchor tag that links to the fullsize image around each thumbnail. Depending on the lightbox plugin you prefer to use, group all images from the same gallery (often done using the rel attribute in HTML). At that point, just hide all but one thumbnail per gallery. Hook your lightbox plugin to the galleries.

Check it out: http://jsfiddle.net/8WcUp/1/