A lovely sunny hike to Snow Lake, then an extension to Source Lake. Absolutely beautiful weather but surprisingly deep snow.
Options are getting limited for my Corolla, so we ended up in Alpental parking lot at about 9:30. Alpental isn’t open yet but Armstrong Express was rolling for much of today so opening day must be soon. I packed my snowshoes, put spikes on and headed up the Snow Lake trail. Weather was amazingly sunny, so it was shorts/T-shirt weather on the way up. Looking straight up, the sky was that shade of blue that is almost black.
The sun was also pretty good at loosening the ice crust and there were some moderate avalanches. One at 4100 feet on the westward traverse was pretty threatening. It should freeze up nicely tonight but it will be interesting to see what tomorrow’s sleet and above-freezing temperatures do to it. Most of the way up to the lookout was OK. The trail was well packed-down but it was easy to posthole if you strayed an inch or two to the side.
It was a different story on the way down to the lake. Much colder and more difficult. The trail has been made by snowshoers so it’s not packed down and it’s easy to lose at times. The lake is frozen hard and is being used as a highway by skiers. I was intending to get to Gem Lake but I had to trailblaze, and my snowshoes had nowhere near enough surface area to prevent postholing. Sinking in snowshoes is a dispiriting experience so I took the lake route as far as the log bridge. If anything, conditions were worse from there, so back along the lake I went.
The scenery from the lake to the ridgetop was stunning. You could point your camera in any direction and feel like Ansel Adams. With wisps of cloud swirling in against the ink-dark sky, the white trees stood out beautifully.
On the way down, I had a quick look at the Source Lake trail. It looked particularly vulnerable to avalanches and I’m sure it didn’t get much better in the afternoon. Maybe stay away, unless you have skis/snowboard. Those guys were having a great time.
The trail out was notable for the huge number of people heading out in mid-afternoon wearing sneakers and with small children. If you’re not prepared, you have no chance of getting to the lookout and every chance of becoming a statistic. The exceptions were the wonderful Central Asian family having a cookout on their Jetboil. That soup smelled delicious.
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