Spider Meadows #1511

The main motivation of the trip was to check out snow conditions outside of the I-90 hikes we'd been doing all spring so we thought that visiting Spider Meadows would give us the option of a pleasant destination with the option of continuing to Spider Gap for a look into the lyman lakes basin. The day was drizzly but the cloud base remained high enough to see all the surrounding peaks. Getting to Spider Meadows presented no difficulty so we continued on to the start of the permanent snowfield. The snow was soft and easy to navigate with just ski poles so we continued on up to the gap fully expecting to see the lyman lake basin covered in snow. The basin was in fact largely melted out and it looked like it would be very easy to get to Cloudy Pass. Sadly, we were only prepared for a day trip and had to turn around and head back to cars as the skies cleared and wonder what the view would be like now........:-)