Snoquera Falls Loop, Moss Lake Nature Loop and Lower Dalles Creek Falls

We drove to Camp Shepard off of Hwy 410 in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest to hike this morning. We started on the Moss Lake Nature Trail (0.6 mile loop going counterclockwise), then hiked up the Snoquera Falls loop counterclockwise, taking a side trail up to Lower Falls Creek Falls and back from the north end of the Snoquera Falls loop. Overall 7 miles with 1,400ft of gain. We saw 10 other hikers on the trail. These trails are in a lovely forest with tall trees and lots of moss. In places the moss was like a carpet covering the forest floor.

We saw early wildflowers in bloom, including calypso orchids.

Early view of Snoquera Falls going over the Palisades.

The creek below the falls runs over the trail.

We took the steep boot track up to the base of the falls.

Snoquera Falls has a drop of 480 ft

View across from Snoquera Falls 

The trail continues down below the Palisades and lovely rock cliffs

We joined the Pallidades Trail, going across Dalles Creek.

Small ferns growing in the moss

Partial view of Lower Dalles Creek Falls from a boot track off the main Pallisades Tail:

View of Lower Dalles Creek Falls from the base of the falls, more of the falls is hidden by the trees (a total drop of 280 ft)

After a lunch break, we returned to the Snoquera Loop Trail and the trailhead.. Loved seeing these trees growing off a double nurse log.

some of the wildflowers and fungi seen along the trail today:

  

 

  

 

   

 

 

 

Snoquera Falls Snowshoe

We drove up Hwy 410 hoping to hike up Dalles Ridge, but there was too much snow for our vehicle to enter FR 72 to park and hike, so we continued up to the plowed road and parking area at Camp Shepard to have some fun snowshoeing before the anticipated wind storm in the afternoon. There are several connecting trails from this area. We found no foot, ski or snowshoe prints in the snow since the last fresh snow. We started out breaking trail down the Moss Lake Trail to check out the conditions, after about 0.3 miles we decided to return and snowshoe up to Snoquera Falls. We snowshoed about 3.5 miles overall with 880 ft of elevation gain.

The beginning of the trail from the parking area led through an archway of snowy trees.

Bridge along the Moss Lake Trail

Back to the trail junction. For awhile we followed elk tracks in the snow, and heard elk calls up above us.

Snowshoed through a lovely forest.

icicles on logs

and on rocky cliffs above us

some larger icicles

There were a couple of peekaboo views to the ridge across the valley.

Snoquera Falls, lovely in the snow with many icicles.
Here at the open slopes, the snow was up over our knees with snowshoes on, and the exposure was very steep. We decided this was a good turn around spot for this morning.

















Snowshoeing back down was easy on the trail we had already broken!
Lovely forest creek

Snoquera Falls and the Palisades Winter Hike

We decided to combine two hikes today, the Snoquera Falls Loop hike (mostly highlighted in yellow) with the Palisades Trail (we went as far as the orange highlighted area today) for 13.2 miles and 2,270 ft of overall elevation gain. These hikes are located off of Hwy 410 before the turnoff to Crystal Mtn.

View of Snoquera Falls as seen on the drive up to the trailhead. The falls are coming down off the Palidades.

The beginning of the Snoquera Falls loop hike is a nice flat forested walk for 0.5 miles, before heading uphill.

The trail climbs up 770 ft to Snoquera Falls (449 ft).

Wide angle shot of Snoquera Falls

There was a fair amount of water on the trail below the falls, but we felt comfortable crossing here to continue on the loop trail.

View of Snoquera Falls from the other side of the loop trail.

Along the upper part of this loop trail we could see across the valley to Suntop.

Beautiful vistas of moss, trees and rocky cliffs as we hiked down along the Snoquera Falls Loop trail.

We dropped down most of the 700 ft of elevation, and hiked about 0.4 miles on a connector trail over the the west end of the Palisades Trail. This trail begins to climb almost immediately.

The creek was overflowing the trail.

In about a mile, we reached the short boot path to Lower Dalles Falls (280 ft).

There were some trees down on the trail and some areas had mud slides and rock slides. It was all passable.

After climbing about 0.5 miles further up the trail, we reached Upper Dalles Falls.

Near the top of the switchbacks are these nice wooden steps!

The trail then climbs at a much more gradual pace, continuing through the forest and over streams.

At the first viewpoint atop the palisades, we had a view of Suntop across the valley and

we could also see Skookum Falls (zoom)

While continuing on to the second viewpoint, our light misting turned into snowfall.

















When we reached the second viewpoint, we were in the clouds.

We hiked a short ways further to get out of the wind and enjoy our lunch. Quite a bit of snow had fallen by the time we ate our lunch, so we decided to return before enough snow fell to obliterate the trail.

After hiking back down the Palisades trail, we rejoined the mostly flat section on the Snoquera Falls Loop trail to the trailhead.
















We did encounter another area where the creek overflowed the trail.