Gold Creek Trail

We drove out to Hyak on the east side of Snoqualmie Pass to hike
/snowshoe part way of the Gold Creek Trail, hiking around Gold Creek Pond and Heli Pond on the way. He hiked about 6 miles with 37 ft of elevation gain.
The road to Gold Creek Pond was still open but very icy, so we decided to park at the SnoPark area and walk up the road.
View of Gold Creek below Gold Creek Pond

Gold Creek Pond

views around Gold Creek Pond

Heli Pond













views around Heli Pond

a side trail on the way around Heli Pond

breif glimpse of Rampart Ridge to the east from Heli Pond

We continued up the Gold Creek Trail, we put on our snowshoes and would probably been ok without them today.
View of Gold Creek

There was only a couple inches of snow and the avalanche level was low today, so we were comfortable hiking through the avalanche area.

some icicles along the trail

Bridge across a creek













We stopped where the trail has access to Gold Creek Pond for our lunch break and turned around here.

returning through the avalanche area













brief glimpse of Kendall Peaks from along the trail

Gold Creek Pond Snowshoe

 Wanted a short snowshoe trip up at Snoqualmie Pass this morning (ended up snowshoeing for 4.5 miles). Parked at the west end of the Gold Creek Pond SnoPark and started up the road toward the Kendall Peak Lakes trail. Enjoyed the fresh snow!

 The tracks I followed stopped after about 1/2 mile, so I turned around to head to Gold Creek Pond.

 Instead of driving down the mile road to the winter trailhead, I show showshoed down the snow covered road.

 There was a nice creek along the way.

 In the winter, the trail starts off of Lake Mardee Road and heads up NF144. I followed fresh tracks up to Snowshoe Lane where I dropped down to Gold Creek Pond, breaking trail to the pond.

North shore of Gold Creek Pond

View of Rampart Ridge to the east, before the clouds came down.

I enjoyed breaking trail in the fresh snow that had fallen overnight.

Gold Creek Pond a little further down the trail

The bridge was completely covered in snow.

There were several beautiful creeks.

A winter wonderland

Snowshoeing back along Lake Mardee Road to my car, I also enjoyed the ice formations on the rock cliffs.

Gold Pond and Gold Creek Trail Snowshoe

 There was fresh snow up at Snoqualmie Pass today, so we decided to give our snowshoes a workout. We parked on Lake Mardee Road where it meets NFR 144, and snowshoed up the road to Gold Creek Pond and snowshoed around the lake.

Panorama from the picnic ground on the south side of Gold Pond.

There are some small islands in the pond.

On the north side of the pond, there is a small promontory you can walk out on. Panorama from the promontory on the north side:

 Then, we snowshoed up the closed FSR to a smaller pond that has a trail going around it (0.3 miles)









The only prints we saw here, were animal prints.

Than we continued up the FSR to Gold Creek Trail. We only hiked a short way up today.

 We enjoyed the snow covered landscape and were surprised not see any other people on this hike today.

 WE snowshoed back along this creek on the east side of Gold Creek Pond.

Another beautiful day outside!