I was going to try for Mt Defiance but just getting to Mason LK was tough. The trail is muddy and hard to follow. The snow starts before the boulder field. The snow was soft at the boulder field. I fell through to my chest several times. This realy was not fun. I did make it to the lake but it realy was not worth the effort. There were lots of trees to crawl under in the mud.

My 14 year old son and I went to Mason Lake the morning of May 7th. Trail is in reasonably good condition. A short ways past the 'road' portion of the trail you have the choice of going two ways. If you take the left fork you head along the stream and it switchbacks its way up. If you take the right fork it heads up very steeply. We took the right fork and it is definitely steep. There was no snow on the trail until you come to the large boulder field. It is still completely covered and is almost impossible to find the rock cairns but there are a couple visible through the snow. The trail continues out the far side of the boulder field and is on snow the rest of the way to the lake. Work your way along the stream valley and you'll get to the lake in a short time. The difficult part is finding the route out of the boulder field if you haven't been there before. Hopefully you will be able to follow someone elses tracks who knows the area. The lake and mountains were just gorgeous as sunday was a crystal clear day.

Hit the trailhead around 11:00 am and was the only car there. The trail was dry up until the point where the trail parallels Mason Creek. At that point was postholing and mud stomping. Decided to ascend the clear slope before the lake. Followed some ski tracks to over the southeastern slope of Bandera, until descending into the lake basin. Lake is still snow covered with about 3 - 4 ' of snow around the lake. Lunched on an exposed rock on the southern shore and watched the Canadian Geese returning for another season of fouling our city parks. Headed back along the Creek until I discovered someone's food cache partially buried in the snow. A couple of hefty bags with MREs, matches, toliet paper, juice boxes, etc. Something had already helped itself to most of the food, and in the process left a mess of wrappers and torn plastic. Having only a small plastic sack, I gathered as much of the garbage as I could and buried the rest with remains of the hefty bags and covered it with a 2 gallon jug of water that was part of the cache. Hopefully someone heading that way can rertrieve the rest and join me in cursing inconsiderte sots who do this.

A group of us journeyed to the I-90 exit 42 for an assault on the mighty and feared Bandera Mountain. We hopped out of our various vehicles and over the gate just N of the exit, and followed the old logging road (taking the first left) across an old steel bridge. Soon after, the road starts downhill. Since our goal was to increase potential energy, we elected to head off the roadway up towards the Mason Lake trailhead. This route, carefully followed, is not too brushy and you'll end up very close to the trailhead if you are skilled in the art of navigation. So far we hadn't been on snow, but the road had a foot or so on it. In fact, most of the rest of the way was snow covered. We went up the Mason Lake trail to near the boulder field, then headed E towards the summit ridge. THis route is very nice! Careful of slidey areas but most of the way you can find good protection in trees. We reached the false summit. It's true! maybe... the ridge towards the true summit looked a tad exposed and the cornices intimidating. But only for a very short distance. Enough to keep us satisfied with our potential energy gain, which we enjoyed converting to kinetic on the descent.

I heard viscous rumours that there is a trail from exit 42 to the start of the Mason Lake. So on a very soggy day I set out to find it. Alas, 'twas not to be found, but the travel is easy through the once-logged area. It sure beats driving 6 miles, and only takes about 1/2 hour and 500' elevation gain to get to the trailhead. There was no snow all the way to Mason Lake. Just a skosh at Rainbow Lake, which was mostly frozen.