Alta Vista Loop — Sunday, Jan. 23, 2022

We picked up an overnight permit from the Longmire Wilderness Info Center Saturday morning and headed to the Paradise area to snow camp for the night. Even though it has not snowed for a few days, the roads can still be icy. After leaving the Longmire parking lot, we headed to Paradise, hit a small patch of ice, and kicked our Tacoma truck into 4WD. Shortly after leaving Longmire, we also saw a SUV had slid out, and off the side of the road into some trees. 

The Trail: I headed out on skis, while the 2 others headed out in snowshoes. The trail was completely snow covered, but the snow was so firm, you can easily have gotten away with just hiking up in microspikes. 

We overnighted near the top of the Alta Vista area. Beautiful night up there! Woke up to a great sunrise too. 

Our ski/snowshoe out, the snow was pretty icy. The lot was not full around 11:00 AM Sunday. The rangers and volunteers were out checking permits though!