The road up to Paradise was in excellent condition. The trails are covered in about 2 feet of snow and your options are a little limited since 2 feet of snow is still not a lot but enough to need (should need) gear. I heard Nisqually Vista has a nice path cut into it but it may not have the poles up yet. The first part of Skyline is packed down so my spikes worked fine with no postholing. About twenty minues in, you run into deep postholes. Then you encounter so many postholes it becomes a hazard and really slows your trek. I cussed. It was cuss worthy. About thirty minutes up the trail, I switched to my snowshoes. That was still precarious in a few really choppy sections. It seems the trail splits. To the left you end up hitting upper Deadhorse Creek, the path I took. To the right you hit the Panorama Point snowshoe path. I then cut up Glacier Vista. I stopped before the summer route to Panorama Point. The views were surprisiningly amazing. I thought I would get a few minutes of coolness, but the weather system was very slow moving and the rain didn't hit until about 2pm. I wore my snowshoes all the way back to the parking lot and was so glad to have them as tourists slipped, slid, and zipped all over the place. While I sound cranky about the postholing, the people were all so neat to talk to.
Gear-if you're headed up to the mountain-pack the good stuff, snowshoes, poles with baskets, spikes, hand and foot warmers, buff, gloves, sunglassess, sunscreen, water. Don't forget it's tire traction time so pack that in your car along with super soft socks.
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