"Want to go snowshoeing?"

"Now?"

"Yeah."

"Where?"

"I don't know yet."

"Yeah. I'm in."

After a little more thinking I suggested we head to Lodge Lake, but first we had to brave semis, snow, and freezing rain on the way to the Pass. Even with the heater blasting the wipers had a hard time keeping up with the ice building up on the windshield. In fact, it wasn't until we were above Denny Creek that the rain turned to snow and we could see well again.

The nice folks at the Summit had plowed the road all the way up to the PCT trailhead (probably for parking more than access, but I'll take what I can get) and we pulled in as the only car in the lot. (Big surprise, I know.)

A security jeep pulled up and gave us the traditional, "What's going on here?" question. I was momentarily transported back to my college days when we'd play croquet on the HUB lawn at midnight and share donuts with the cops who'd come by to investigate.

"Just a little snowshoeing."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Beaver Lake and Lodge Lake. Want to come?"

"Uh... no. It's 12 degrees out. I'm going to get some soup. You have a beacon?"

So in spite of the hat that was straight out of Fargo this guy knew his stuff. Plus he was smart enough to see we were of little danger other than to ourselves and left us alone. (We saw him on the way out parked under the overpass presumably eating soup.)

We started up the PCT toward the slopes. Where the trail switches back around the end of a log there were freshish tracks heading deeper into the woods and we chose to follow those instead. Probably not a great idea, but there they were. We eventually abandonned those tracks and headed straight up hill winding up at the water towers.

What a difference two weeks make. On the first nightshoe of the season it took me and Michelle an hour and a half to go a mile and 600 vertical feet to get to Beaver Lake. Our destination on that trip was actually Lodge Lake, but it was clear we weren't going to make it there in such difficult conditions.

Over the last two weeks the slopes have been groomed, packed, consolidated, whatever. Crossing them involved none of the hard work of breaking trail or digging ourselves out of holes that plagued the first trip of the season. It took only a little more than 35 minutes for us to get to Beaver Lake in spite of the round about way to get onto the slopes from the PCT trailhead.

At Beaver Lake we faced the formidable challenge of finding the PCT. Or at least it seemed as though it should be formidable. Turns out it wasn't. There was an opening in the trees and a pretty obvious trail-like crease in the snow heading south. No problem. We passed into a clearing just south of the lake and then started a slight downhill.

I've been on this section once before, long ago. (So long ago I don't have a trip report on it!) It's only a mile and it drops about 400 feet to the lake. We followed what appeared to be the trail and were rewarded by a couple of trail marker sightings. Emboldened, I charged ahead only to fall into a trench at least three feet deep. After fighting my way out of it we decided following the trench was a bad plan and started paralleling it. That was a good plan until we lost the trail.

We wound up heading more uphill than we should have, but continued looking for the trail. My GPS batteries died, but always prepared I popped in a new set. Except the new set were a pair of uncharged rechargeables. Environmentally sound, but not terribly useful. Luckily, Jeremy had his own GPS and after a few moments of concern that his batteries were dead, too, we were able to pick a new direction and forge on.

All along, Jeremy had been lighting the way with his headlamp. I can usually see pretty well with my headlamp, consisting of four LEDs. In fact, it's usually brighter than other people's lamps. However, when Jeremy turned his light on I could no longer see the beam from mine. His is a biking lamp and projects a strong, clear, blue/white beam that was amazing.

Unfortunately, at some point we had gotten turned around and wound up climbing a bit of a hill looking for the trail believing it was above us when it was actually below us. When we came to the edge of an avalanche chute we used both GPS receivers to get a confirmed fix and realized we were going in the wrong direction. On the way down I was amazed to see just how far up we had come. Ouch.

After a few more GPS fixes we hopped a log and looked at what might be the trail. It was confirmed not by modern technology and satellites, but by seeing the edge of a man-made bridge that had no business anywhere, but on the PCT.

From there it was a pretty easy jaunt to the lake. The trail didn't go right to it (though I seem to recall it did in the summer) so we cut straight down to the lakeside. Even though we couldn't see much in the blowing snow we found the edge of the lake. I dug into the side of a drift to get out of the wind and we sat down for some hot chocolate. I think we could both have easily set up camp and called it a night right there, but of course there was the trip back.

We trudged back up the way we had come (I've got to remember to think about coming back up the way I go down when breaking trail) and followed our quickly disappearing footsteps back to the PCT. We found where we had found the bridge and decided that rather than following our off-trail route we'd try to follow the PCT back. About a quarter mile later we found where we had departed from the PCT a few hours earlier.

Aside from getting stuck in the same hole on the way in we had little trouble making it back to Beaver Lake. However, once exposed to the winds at the Pass I longed for the shelter of the trees. The wind had all but erased our tracks and it made it difficult to see. Our eyebrows and eyelashes were coated with ice. Scrunching up my face I could feel the snow pulling. Although my hands were warm in two sets of gloves the outer layer was frozen in a grip around my trekking poles so I couldn't wipe the ice off.

The groomer in his cozy cab pointed a light at us and I waved. No doubt he thought us morons and continued his slow crawl up the mountain.

Back at the car we found three inches of new snow, but none of the ice from freezing rain that had been predicted. The drive home was slow (over an hour compared with 20 minutes with no weather) and there were times when the blowing snow forced me to slow to a crawl. The rain didn't really start until we were almost at our exit, but it wasn't on the street, just the trees.

Total distance was about four and a half miles. Gain was roughly 1,300 feet with our special detour. Total trail time was about four hours.

(And why so few pictures? The camera claimed extreme fatigue and decided to take a nap. (The battery ran out rather abruptly.))

Oh, yeah. One last thing. Thanks to Clara's fascination with White Christmas I had "The Best Things Happen While Your Dancing" playing in my head for almost the entire four hour trip.