Most of the places I love to visit are buried in snow. Sure, we could add miles and miles just to get to the trailhead, but experience tells me that means we don't get where we really want to go. Instead, I decided the super Subaru and new tires would be able to get us to a trailhead and allow a traverse to our destination. In the end, this worked out. Along the way...

The road was snowy, but traction was still good. I drove confidently past our usual turnoffs. On a straightaway, we lost that traction and started sliding backward. Not good. I figure we slid about 50 feet straight back before coming to a halt. We hit nothing and it wasn't too traumatic so of course we tried again and got through that stretch with no problems.

The trailhead was empty (big surprise) so we were breaking trail almost from the start. Thankfully, we've been up this way lots of times before so navigation wasn't much of a problem. Plus the snow meant we could pretend we were crows and head straight for the ridge without all the switchbacks that eat up time.

On the ridge, HOS and I reviewed our options. We could continue to our original destination, but that would be another couple of miles traversing under at least one avalanche chute. Or we could climb the nearby peak. Or we could descend to the lake below us. Since the boy hadn't been to the lake, we opted for this last option.

The snow was deeper in the basin, but by breaking trail on the way down we made the climb back up easier. Through the meadows, across a little creek, and down to the lake itself. Gorgeous.

The peak we had considered towered 700 feet above the frozen lake. The sun was beating on the steep face and rollers indicated some instability in the snow. We marveled at the view and in that moment of inattention, Tinkham sprinted onto the ice. DANG DOG! GET BACK HERE! Nope. (Guess who's restarting her recall training.)

She poked around the far shore. We could see tracks between the still exposed rocks which clearly interested her. Finally, she heard a whistle (or decided she was ready to come back) and sprinted back to us. Seriously, Tinkham. You and me. And the training collar.

We took a snow depth reading and began the climb back. I'm rarely a fan of going up on the way out, but when we reached the ridge we got a great view of Tahoma on the horizon making it all worthwhile.

And the drive out? No problems. We never lost traction and managed to avoid being hit by the other people still trying to drive up the snowy road.

Clearly, we're immune to accident and injury. Right? Yeah. Right. Just wait until our next adventure to see how wrong we were.

📍 On the lands of the Wenatchi people.