Hurricane Ridge/Hill Snowshoe

We drove up to Hurricane Ridge at Olympic National Park today to go snowshoeing. The gate didn't open until 10 AM. Our plans were to head up toward Hurricane Hill, not sure how far we would go as the avalanche danger changed to "considerable" overnight. We snowshoed about 2/3's of the way there and back, going about 4 miles rt with a couple hundred of feet elevation gain. We had a lot of change in weather today. It was snowing sideways with limited visibility by the time we returned to the parking lot.

When we arrived at Hurricane Ridge, the skies were clear toward the east, but the beautiful mountains to the south were completely covered in clouds. The first part of the "trail" is the closed Hurricane Hill Road, it is 1.7 miles long.

 About 4 people had started out ahead of us, so we didn't need to lay down fresh tracks. We had blue sky come and go above us.

 Occasionally, we would have glimpses of snow covered peaks in the near distance.

 And then the clouds and snow would come, obscuring our view.

 The snow was soft and dry, beautiful to snowshoe in.

 After the "road" ends, we follow the Hurricane Hill "trail" until it skirts around the hills along the way. The slope where the summer trail goes is too steep for snow showing, so we headed up over those hills. Here we are on top of the first large hill, we weren't certain where the best place to go down the other side was, as there were no fresh tracks and I hadn't gone beyond this point in deep snow before. An experienced hiking group came by and we followed them for awhile.

We continued up and over the next large hill, seen in the picture to the left, staying up on the ridge line.

Just beyond that next hill, is Hurricane Hill. Before we reached the bottom of the second large hill, the clouds came down and it began snowing again. We decided to turn around in case it became white out conditions. Of course, after we turned around for a bit, it stopped snowing and the clouds lifted for awhile.

Heading back down as the visibility decreased.

We saw several gray jays along the way today.

 I love the snowy landscape!

As we hiked back to the "road", it cleared up for a bit and we could see down into the valley below,

 and also on the other side of the "road".

 Some of the snowy covered trees: