Deadhorse Creek, Nisqually Vista Loop, Skyline Trail Loop, Glacier Vista Snowshoe & Glacier Vista - Panorama Point — Saturday, Dec. 5, 2020

Summary

Did the Nisqually Vista Loop and then went up the Deadhorse Creek Trail up to the Skyline & Glacier Vista trails finally turning around at 6500 feet of elevation. This came to a total of about 4.7 miles and 1430 feet of vertical gain.

A couple of notes for those wanting to ski/ride down the Glacier Vista/Deadhorse route:

• The metal trail signs marking the various Glacier/Skyline/Morraine trail intersections on the ridge below Glacier Vista are almost-but-not-quite buried. The next snow will probably leave them invisibly lurking just inside the powder. Be very careful down the middle section of the ridge until there's been a fair bit more snow.
• There are still some sizable exposed rock gardens on some of the rolls of the ridge.
• Between where the Deadhorse & Skyline trails split and the bridge that crosses back across Deadhorse Creek there are some fairly sizable sinkholes down to the creek. At the bridge itself, the uphill side is filled in with snow but the downhill side has an 8+ foot drop down to the creek. Be careful riding through this section.

Road/Trailhead

The road up to Paradise was dry the whole way with the exception of two patches of ice where there was water across the road (at the Van Trump Creek crossing and shortly after the Nisqually bridge). On the way down there was a decent amount of snow that had slid onto the down-bound lane about halfway down the long straightaway before the Nisqually Bridge.

The main Paradise lot was full at about 9:45am when we arrived and the overflow lot was already about a quarter full by then. When we left around 2:30pm there were only a handful of spots in the overflow lot. The entire drive down there was a constant stream of cars still coming up.

Bathrooms at Longmire & Paradise are open.

Trail

At this point there are several feet of snow base in most places that are not heavily wind-affected. The snow throughout the route was mostly sun-affected crust on top of partly consolidated snow. Only in well shaded groves was there anything resembling fluff.

The Nisqually Vista is a mellow lollipop loop through mostly treed terrain with the namesake vista at it's apex and a couple nice views of the mountain from the more meadowy portions. The snow here was better than anywhere else today and from the start of the loop portion there were no other people - it was a nice escape from the crowd at Paradise. Today there was a well defined track to follow. In fresher snow, look for bare metal blazes on some of the trees - they are subtle to spot sometimes but there seem to be some throughout the loop.

The Deadhorse Creek Trail all the way up to Glacier Vista was alternating sections of crust and corn snow. There were a handful of people on the lower portion of the trail and then once nearing the Skyline junction it was non-stop crowd the rest of the way up. I don't think I was ever more than 50 feet from another party. The "trail" here is a free-for-all at this time of year, so there were at least 4 well-trodden boot tracks between the Skyline and Deadhorse trails and a bunch of crossovers between them.