With all the recent snow in the past week, we wanted to get out and enjoy things before it warmed up down low and everything turned to muck. Of course with the low snow levels it was tricky to find a good spot w/ low avalanche danger, so in the end we decided on Granite Lakes.
Road is plowed to the Mailbox trailhead, and then there is a couple inches of slush beyond, which should be no problem except for the lowest clearance cars. We parked down at the bottom of the Granite Lakes trailhead spur road as it was messier; however a AWD with some clearance wouldn't have much trouble. With the forecasted warmer weather this should all melt out in a couple days.
We put on snowshoes immediately, however they weren't really needed until after the bridge over Granite Creek. Fortunately someone had been through earlier in the week so it wasn't totally new trail breaking.
Farther up as the snow got deeper we were slowed down by various low hanging trees pushed down over the trail, necessitating detours or knocking snow off.
At ~2600 ft (where an old road goes right down to the creek) we stayed left but were soon stopped by a long stretch of totally snow-bent trees. Rather than fight through them along the usual summer trail, we detoured to the lower, old logging road (not shown on Green Trails or the TH map) down to the creek, and then headed straight up the creek to the lower lake for lunch. Until the trees on the upper trail lose their snow this is probably the easier way. Some tricky creek troughs to cross through, and trail breaking as well to the lower lake.
The lower lake was nice and the sun even came out for a bit. The snow was deep near the lake, at least 3 feet, mostly unconsolidated.
After lunch we headed back the way we came, easier with the trail broken. Another party of 4 followed in our footsteps so the route to the lower lake should are straightforward until it snows again. With it warming up through the day most of the snow had melted off some of the annoying small trees on the old logging road so we made much better time on the way down.
Nice little snowshoe when the snow level is low; considering the whole thing is through rather unattractive second-growth I recommend visiting when it's covered by a recent snowfall.
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