Heather - Maple Pass Loop — Sunday, Nov. 2, 2025

We left the Rainy Pass trailhead at 12:15pm. The trail was in good condition to Heather Pass and completely snow-covered. We saw a handful of hikers, snowshoers, and skiers -- we were grateful for our snowshoes but jealous of the skiers!

It seemed like most of the non-skiers had been turning around around Heather Pass. (And from this point on, it would have been extremely hard going without snowshoes or skis.) Soon after passing Heather Pass, the trail disappeared. We decided to try to get to Maple Pass, but to make it back to the trail by sunset (4:50pm). First, we traversed a moderate snow slope (during which we decided to sign up for an avy course soon...). Then we departed from the summer trail and turned right, heading straight up to the ridge that Maple Pass is on. (Continuing on the summer traverse would have meant a sketchy-looking traverse.) The going was very tough in snowshoes -- lots of powdery snow, with a bit of breakable crust thrown in. We hit the ridge a bit north of Maple Pass, at coordinates 48.50610, -120.76879. To this point we'd had great visibility, but there was a cloud parked on this part of the ridge so we didn't get any views to the west.

Descending back to the snowfield traverse sucked. We tried taking off our snowshoes and plunge-stepping, but we were sinking in to our waists every few steps. We were grateful to make it back to Heather Pass with a few minutes of daylight to spare. The return trip was glorious -- we had the place to ourselves, and we got great sunset colors and then a full moon. We only needed our headlamps once we were in the forest.

Our car was the only one still there when we returned at 6:30pm.