Reflection Lakes Snowshoe

Mt Rainier National Park had been closed for over a week at the entrance by Ashford due to many fallen trees over the road. It reopened yesterday afternoon. We headed up to snowshoe to Reflections Lakes before our next big storm comes in tonight. This was a 3+ mile round trip hike with about 350 ft of gain by going via Inspiration Point.
View of Lane Peak near the parking area at Narada Falls.

It has snowed quite a bit here since this area was open, so the most difficult part of today's snowshoe was getting up to the start of the trail!















There is a lot more snow since I was here 4 weeks ago. No foot prints anywhere along this trail in front of us.
It was interesting that the trail marker poles marked the trail quite a bit differently from when I've snowshoed here before.

We broke trail the entire way and got a good workout for this short trail.

Views of Lane, Chutla and Eagle Peaks in the Tatoosh Range

View of Narada Falls below us from near Inspiration Point

We weren't expecting any views today, so were happy to see the bottom of the glacier area on Mt Rainier for awhile.

Pinnacle Peak disappearing in the clouds.

Nice to have a friend to share breaking the trail with.

Reflection Lake was covered in snow, beautiful even without a view of Mt Rainier.

Stellar jay kept us company while we took a short lunch break.

Snow and clouds as we returned they way we had come.

The Paradise River was almost completely covered in snow.

By the time we returned, we had made a nice path up to the start of the trail.

















Began snowing heavily as we left.

Snow Bowl Hut Snowshoe

We drove to the south district of the Mount Tahoma Trail Association to snowshoe up to Snowbowl Hut. Due to the heavy snow of the last week, only the lower parking area was open, making this an 8.5 mile round trip with 2,000 ft of gain.
We were happy to have blue sky and sunshine on what was forecast to be a partly sunny day.

The road had been recently groomed and was easy to snowshoe on the well packed snow in the morning. In the afternoon, the warmth of the sun had softened the snow making it a bit slushy. In the spirit of "sharing the trail" we stayed to the side of the groomed area.













Found a nice patch of icicles on the way up.

Small tree completely covered and bent over with snow.

This is the largest pinwheel I have seen.

When we reached the saddle, we looked back across to the ridge in the distance to see High Hut. We watched as a pinwheel came down the hillside across the saddle.

On the turnoff to Snow Bowl Hut, we looked behind us and saw Mt Rainier emerging from the clouds (zoom).

In the other direction (center of the photo) is the gazebo, our destination.

Last stretch of the trail up to Snow Bowl Hut (the trail to the gazebo is behind Snow Bowl Hut and off to the right).

As we continued on towards Snow Bowl Hut, we could see the Goat Rocks and Mt Adams to the southeast.

View of Mt Rainier from outside the gazebo

view of Mt Rainier from inside the warm gazebo.
We had a nice long lunch break mostly to ourselves.

As we headed back down the trail, we enjoyed snowshoeing towards Mt Rainier.

As the clouds continued to be blown away, we had a nice view of both Mt Adams (left) and Mt St Helens (right) to the south.

Back at the saddle, we noticed many pinwheels had come down in the afternoon sun. Grateful to be on these trails in an avalanche free zone in these conditions.










Before reaching the closed upper parking area, we had another nice view of the top of Mt Rainier.

Franklin Falls Winter Hike

We took exit 47 off of I-90 this morning to hike up to Franklin Falls on the closed road, about 7.5 miles round trip with an overall elevation gain of 700 ft. The trail was well packed down by previous snowshoers and we did not use our snowshoes. We did post hole well above our knees when stepping off the trail however. Not many people in the morning, but lots of happy hikers heading out to the falls while we were heading back.
The closed road and trail follows along the South Fork of the Snoqualmie River for some nice views.

There has been lots of fresh snow this week, fortunately, others have been out breaking trail the last 2 days!

Summer trailhead, about 2 miles up the closed road.

looking back at the closed road bridge over the river near the trailhead.

more river views

cute little red cabin across the river

small tree overwhelmed by snow

another river view

more small trees bowed down with heavy sow

Across the river, there is lots of icicles on the rocks

such a lovely quiet trail this morning.

Franklin Falls

close up to see the blue ice near the falls (no filters)

view down river from the falls

another view of the falls before we head back


















today was a walk in a winter wonderland!!!

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