Marten Creek #713

The Marten Creek trail is now prime for snowshoeing. The Mt Loop Highway was covered with just a little slush up to the trailhead. There's snow starting at the trailhead with a few bare patches. The trail follows an old logging road and gains elevation quickly. Snowshoes are unnecessary for about the first mile , but thereafter the trail was covered with deep, fresh powder. I occasionally went knee-deep even with 30"" shoes.

This trail is generally free of avalanche danger and I saw no signs of avalanche. There are a number of stream crossings on the trail that can be tricky to negotiate, however. The streams aren't deep but the canyons they cut though the snow are. I made a valiant attempt to long jump one of them, but fell a bit short. When I pulled my head out of the snow everything was still black. A case of snow-blindness. After I cleared the snow out from behind my glasses I could see that I had left a fairly accurate impression of my face in the snow. The outline of my glasses was clearly invisible and my nose had left quite an indentation too. I could even see some stubble marks from my chin.

There's a certain point on this trail about 3 miles in were I always get ... misdirected. There I left a confusion of trails spiraling outward and shooting off in all directions like sub atomic particles in an atom smasher. The various trails eventually converge into a single, decidedly incorrect direction that heads straight down hill toward the valley bottom, but stops short at a very deep hole in the snow filled with a tangle of slide alder and salmonberry. I hung there chest deep in the snow with my snowshoes tangled up in the brush for a while considering my options. Most of them sucked, but I liked the one were I just stayed there and Search and Rescue would fly over in a helicopter and drop me one of those big Saint Bernard dogs with a cask of rum and a bag of potato chips on his collar before hauling me out, giving me a cigar, lighting it for me, and taking me back to my truck. I listened for the sound of helicopter blades for a while, but certain body parts were getting cold so I untangled my snowshoes and crawled out.

... Much later I was back on the trail and pushed ahead to where the trail crosses one of the larger tributaries to Marten Creek. I found a nice log to sit on in the sun and warm up. The route back ran straight and true, but the sun was loosening the snow from the tree tops. For most of the trip out I was bombarded with wet snow clods like the hero in a ticker-tape parade arranged by yetis.