Ventured out to Surprise Lake to tackle the snowshoe route. It was a demanding and fun hike on a sunny "winter" day. Perfect blue sky and no wind at the frozen lake to enjoy the views, lunch, and the birds. Heard what sounded like avalanches in the surrounding mountains a few times but could not spot them. Saw zero other people. The stats on WTA are wrong, this is a more demanding snowshoe than indicated. We stopped at the beginning of the lake, though you can go all the way to the end. Gaia stats: 8.6 miles, 2,900' ascent, 5:12 total time with 1:06 stop time. You need to be avalanche aware. Though the majority of the hike is in heavily treed areas, there are some steep sections and some more open slopes that you have to traverse. There are also boulder fields and lots of areas with running water. You need to navigate these carefully. Postholing is a potential. Route finding is also a challenge once the trail gets steeper, around 3 miles in and then becomes obvious again about a mile later. There were sometimes no tracks and sometimes too many tracks. We have never been here before so relied on Gaia GPS to navigate through this section and occasionally made our own tracks. Gear used: Mountaineering Boots, Gaiters, Microspikes, Mountain Snowshoes, Poles.
Road and Trailhead Conditions: Turn right immediately after crossing the active train tracks and follow that road until the end, about 0.2 miles. There is some construction going on in the area and signs indicating that things are closed, including covers over the trailhead signs. But the road was open and we had no issues. No toilets at the trailhead. Only room for 3-4 cars. Last section of road has some snow and ice, though it is flat. My car has 4.5" clearance and scraped some of the snow in the center of the road, so I just drove with one wheel in the center where I could.
Trail Conditions: Snow and ice started right away, even on the short bit of road that goes up the power lines. So we put on microspikes right away. Trail is snow covered essentially the entire way. Snow level goes from 1" to probably 2-3' at the lake. Trail is pretty obvious for about 3 miles right now and is doable in just boots, then the tracks seem to end. So we got out the snowshoes and made our own track. Occasionally, we came across the boot track again and rejoined the trail. At about 4 miles in the trail becomes very obvious again and we followed it to the lake. It looks like all others who had been there were in boots. But snowshoes definitely made the going easier. There are many challenges on the trail. There are some open slopes that present potentially avalanche danger, though I think because it's in the forest, there aren't any major dangers there. There are many streams running under the snow, so need to be careful not to punch through. Mostly you can see them since the snow cover is not that deep right now. There are several boulder fields to cross. Up high the snow seems pretty deep but down lower again you have to watch for postholing. All in all a good workout on a sunny day. You won't have the sun on you until you get to the lake itself.
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