Artist Point Snowshoe — Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020

I had hoped to get up to Artist Point for sunrise, but unfortunately I snoozed my alarm, slept in an hour, and got sunrise on the road instead. In spite of that, I still got a really nice snowshoe in, and was headed out by 10am.

Since the road to Artist Point is closed, you have to park at the Heather Meadows base area to start off, like the hiking guide entry above says. A previous reporter said this makes the hike 7 miles roundtrip, but the mileage is closer to 4 miles if you follow the route outlined above. That being said,  there are a lot of different ways to get up to Artist Point. For some routes you trade length of hike for steepness. I wound up leaning hard on the steepness factor.

As I was walking, ski patrol was throwing avy control devices, and there was plenty of helicopter noise as well as some exciting, crashing booms in the basin. But, by the time I crested up onto the ridge, it was pretty quiet. The day was somewhat cloudy, but Shuksan and Baker were both out, and there were some really nice clouds in the valley below. 

There were lots of other backcountry skiers on the ridge, but we were all spaced out, and with the muffling effect of the snow, it was really nice and quiet up there. I had done some math on the way up and knew I had to be heading down by 9 15, which was a bummer. I could have stayed up there for a long time.

One note about the route -- it's not signed, and people kind of just walk wherever on their way to the point. Since backcountry skiers and snowshoers both use this area, remember that if you're snowshoeing to stay out of the backcountry ski tracks as best you can. This can sometimes take a little bit of time as you stop and look for snowshoe tracks, but it's a nice courtesy to the skiers.