I almost feel bad. I knew there might be snow on this trip. I mean, I was sure there would be snow on this trip, just not a ton of snow. I'd even asked the boy if he wanted an "all snow" trip or a "some snow" trip when we were planning. I bet he was expecting less snow than we got.
In fact, the snow started after the first mile. As you might expect when traversing rarely traveled forest, we quickly lost the trail. My recollection was not terrible, but when the GPS contradicted me I put my faith in technology. Oops. So we backtracked a little to find the creek
crossing. At least the "bridges" were still there.
On the other side, the snow was firmer, but it wasn't that much clearer where we should go. We mostly went in the general direction until we saw some sign and then reassessed. There was a lot of postholing and a little bit of cursing until we gained the ridge with the old logging road. After that it was just a slog to our high point.
Unfortunately, the ridge from the high point down was a wee bit sketchier in snow that I had remembered. Looking back, I don't think there was snow on the final ridge last time I did this loop. Still, we were more than halfway through the circuit so there was nothing to do but press on.
Like last time, we saw very few people until we had returned to the official trails near the parking lot. Since I'm becoming more and more a recluse as a result of working remotely 100% of the time, this was a perfect outing for me.
📍On the lands of the Snoqualmie people.
