Lanham Lake Snowshoe — Sunday, Mar. 15, 2020

Did a snowshoe trip up to Lanham Lake to enjoy a rare sunny day.  Highway 2 was pretty clear, with only a few small ice/snow patches.  Sticking to the ruts we could avoid most of these.  The parking lot of the Nordic Center was hardpacked snow/ice, but was not particularly slippery; our 2WD car had no problems.  We couldn't tell for sure if the Nordic Center had closed like the downhill area, but there were XC skiiers doing their thing.  There were a couple of porta-potties in the parking lot, but sadly no hand sanitizer. 

The first part of the trail, up to the powerlines, was probably the toughest.  The surface was hardpacked and icy, and the going was pretty steep at times, so having snowshoes definitely helped.  Once we got to the powerlines we weren't sure which was the "right" route, but we followed some tracks and it worked OK. 

After re-entering the woods the snow got more powdery, at least off-trail, but the path itself is pretty packed down.  Steeper bits alternate with nearly flat sections for a while, and a final little climb gets you to the lake. 

At the lake itself, the snow was pretty deep.  There was a bit of a path around the rim, and some tracks going across the middle, but having snowshoes helped with flotation.  It was quite cold up there - just having gloves off for long enough to eat a sandwich, our hands got very cold and we took some precautions to keep them warm.  The trip down was almost twice as fast as the trip up - always fun to plunge-step down the snowdrifts on the steeper parts.

I think we saw about 5 other parties on the trail, mostly going up as we were going down.  

Highly recommend this trip - beautiful scenery, easy to get to.  3.2 miles sounds short but it was about the right amount for a moderate day out.