Cooper River Snowshoe

We saw a herd of elk crossing the road past Roslyn on our way to Salmon La Sac to hike to Cooper Lake along the Cooper River Trail.
The road is now closed about a mile before the Salmon La Sac Campground and a SnoPark Pass is needed to park along the road. This made our hike 10 miles round trip with an overall elevation gain of about 1,100 ft.






This map shows the Salmon La Sac Groomed Trail System. Red for snowmobiles and blue for groomed ski trails. The Cooper River Trail is not groomed, but the 1 mile from the SnoPark area to the trailhead is groomed. We made sure we stayed off the groomed ski tracks.
The first 1/4 mile of our route was shared with snowmobiles and the road at Cooper Lake is also open to snowmobiles. We did meet a couple at Cooper Lake who had snowshoed up the road along the snowmobile tracks.

Closed road from the Salmon La Sac SnoPark

View of the Cle Elum River upstream from the bridge

Views of the Cle Elum River downstream from the bridge.

View of Cooper River about 0.1 mile from the Cooper River trailhead (at Salmon La Sac Campground)

Was wonderful to see the sun and some blue skies today.

The snow was deep enough that we put on our snowshoes about 1 mile up the official trail. However, there were several areas where streams melted the snow across the trail.

After 2 miles, we did not see anymore tracks in the snow and we began to break trail in heavy wet snow.

The sunlight made the lichen on the trees appear golden.

Cooper River further upstream.

View from the road bridge just below Cooper Lake, lovely reflection here on the Cooper River.

View from the same bridge looking downstream.

View at Cooper Lake near the outlet. This was a beautiful spot for our lunch break.

View across the Cooper River at the outlet.
















Looking downstream towards the bridge.

Last view at Cooper Lake before returning to the trail.

Couple of views of the Cooper River as we snowshoed back to the trailhead.

A beautiful winter snowshoe.