Wow, it's me again! Surprised to see no new trail reports considering the number of people we saw over the weekend on this trail.
We're trying to get our winter camping going, even though the weather had not been cooperative up until this weekend. With a forecast of some good snow we got prepared, and waited to see how the pass would do. Luckily, the winter storm had died down a lot overnight on Friday, so the pass was cleared with no restrictions around 10:00am on Saturday.
My car is not good in snow, so we parked down at the start of the forest road with the intent to hike the road up to the trailhead, then continue from there. The snow on the road on Saturday was low enough for most cars to pass, with deep ruts in the snow from car tires. There was a risk of being unable to turn around on the road due to the middle berm of snow. We did see a station wagon having difficulty with this as we hiked up. The snow got deep enough that we put on our microspikes about a mile before the trailhead. We kept them on the rest of the hike, all the way to Talapus Lake.
We made it to the trailhead and took a small break. There was only one truck up there when we arrived. It left shortly after we appeared. The trail to Talapus was basically a stream for the first few hundred feet of trail. After that it was all snow. Microspikes and trekking poles were helpful. We crossed paths with a couple of other hikers out enjoying the trail. I would say the depth of snow ranged from 2-8 inches depending on tree cover.
The lake is mostly frozen over at this point. Our tracks were the first ones over to the camping on the west side of the lake. We found the spot we had looked at last time we were up at Talapus. We stomped down the snow and set up our tent, then set up a tarp over it because the snow was really falling off of the trees! We boiled water, made some food, and then settled in for the night since it was the Solstice and the day was short.
Sunday morning we hiked back out. Nothing unusual on the trail. Just lots of snow! We got back to the trailhead and found a lot more cars had braved the snowy road. The snow on the road had melted a lot overnight, and the snow itself was pretty sloppy. It was clearly melting, so it was slushy and slippery. Lots more bare road on the way back down to where I had parked at the start.
Be aware of the avalanche risk here! There is one spot on the forest road coming in where runout could happen, we moved through that section quickly.
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