Lena the Dog and I headed down to the south side of Mt St Helens for a day trip. It's a lot of miles to drive from Olympia, but for comparison's sake the roads are a lot faster than the roads to Mt Rainier, so it didn't take much more time to travel a much greater distance. I'd guess it took about 2 hours, 15 min each way (versus 2 hours solid to get to Paradise).

Anyway, I parked at Marble Mountain Sno-Park, and started walking along a hard-packed ski trail towards the June lake trailhead. There were quite a few snow machines buzzing around, but relatively few when compared to areas closer to Seattle. Along the first 1.25 miles of trail parallelling the snowed-over road, I saw 3 samples of what I took to be cougar scat. If not cougar, then it was likely another type of cat. Lena wasn't freaked out, so I didn't think much about it.

After 1.25 miles, we turned north onto the June Lake trail and away from the snowmobilers. This trail was also hard-packed and well defined. We passed a few guys coming down from the lake who had spent the night up there - I was so jealous! Shortly after passing them, we stopped at a viewpoint where I took a photo of the mountain and June Creek . At this point, Lena got all queezy and whiney. This really freaked me out, as the only other time she got like this was a year ago at Marten Lake where I saw a good cougar print and later read on the WTA web site of a party walking into a cougar den just below the lake.

Despite her unease, Lena was up for moving on, so we continued up the trail another mile or so to the lake. I just made sure to keep my eyes wide open and talked really loud (to the imagined (?) predator) to lessen the chances of a close encounter.

We got to the lake after 2.5 miles and 1 hour and 15 minutes of pretty easy hiking and had a snack. The lake was unfrozen, and there was a very pretty waterfall emptying into it. Beyond the lake is a wide open area that rises up to the Loowit Trail and beyond to the rim of the mountain. Great views. It looked like a smooth white blanket draped over the mountain. Beautiful.

Before long, Lena started acting funny again and I decided to head back down the trail. I would have liked to make a loop trip, as there was apparantly dozens of well-defined trails in the area. However, I didn't know ahead of time the condition and quantity of the winter trails here and I didn't want to divert from the out-and-back route that I'd told my girlfriend that I'd be taking.

Shortly after leaving the lake, Lena and I found something that I am 99.99% sure wasn't there on the way up: Poop. Fresh (ie sitting on top of the snow, not melted into it like the other droppings I saw). Squishy (not frozen) - as evidenced by my ski-pole poke test and Lena's attempt to gobble it up. Fresh and squishy poop - I was starting to get a headache! Maybe I missed it on the way up, but I doubt it. I got freaked some more - but at least Lena kept her cool this time.

So, it was a loud trip back down to the car, and it proved to be uneventful. I never saw the hidden pooper, but I'm guessing that it saw us. :-)

It was a great, albeit short and quick, trip. The snow was great - I never even considered donning my snowshoes although I carried them the whole time. It was about 5 miles total and it took less than 3 hours. Elevation gain about 700'.

I'd love to get back to the area this spring before the snow melts away with a more elaborate itinerary so that I could do some more exploring.

Lots of fresh snow all over the trails surrounding Marble Mtn. Snow Park. The Pine Martin trail had been fairly well used by the snow shoes and X-country skiers. Beginning at the June lake trail head we had to break through 6-8"" of new snow, but there is a nice track up to the lake now. We couldn't see the Mtn at all, but visibility was good up to the lake. The lake has ice and snow on it but is still thawed near the water fall, which is still flowing. The snow switched to a light rain when we got down to the 83 road to get back to the snow park. The Roads on the way up were fine except for a little slush near the snow parks. tough call on what it's doing now.