At night the world shrinks to the range of your headlamp. The trees with blue diamonds that mark the route emerge from the darkness far too late to really be of use navigating. If you're lucky you've got a snowshoe trench you can follow. If you're really lucky the people that made the trench knew where they were going.

Since we had just used this trench a few days before we were pretty sure it was a good route. (Of course, an inch or two of fresh snow allowed some of our party to miss a turn in the dark so it's always wise to keep your eyes open.) And since we've been to Hyak Lake many times over the years even if we missed every turn we'd have been able to find our way. (And that's not even taking into account the many GPS and satellite communicators we were armed with.)

Perhaps the biggest difference was at our destination. During the day I spent tons of time looking at the far off ridges and the way the light played over the contours of the snow. At night it was far more social because the darkness hid everything more than a hundred feet away.

Some people don't like going back to the same trail over and over again. Given the number of times I've repeated my local trails I'm clearly not one of those people. Even if I was, I'd consider returning to trails I'd already done, but at night. Without the light of day it's not really the same trail and it's certainly a whole new adventure. Just make sure you have a good headlamp and remember to tell someone where you're going.