This was our first time visiting this trail, so it was confusing to try to sort out the various versions of instructions that I found online. We discovered that the rental shop has some maps of the snowshoe trails, but they're hand-drawn and not very accurate. When you follow the tree-line to the left of the magic carpet area, it leads to a road that is groomed for skiing. We followed that road and found the trail sign for the Bullion Basin trail. Some other snowshoers had been there before us, without their tracks the trail would have been difficult to see.
We ended up going to the old lift house and checking out the views of the mountains around the resort. This took us about two hours, round trip. The snow was fresh, the route was entirely in the trees without worries about avalanche terrain.
The views were fantastic, the sky was blue and the weather much warmer than forecast. No parking permits are needed here. We checked in with ski patrol, which is behind the building to the left of the gondola. They have a safety/contact info form people can fill out before setting out.
I brought my GPS, I recommend a map and GPS for this trail. If you've never been on it, going on one of Crystal's guided snowshoe hikes would be a good idea since it could be hard to follow.
The trail is fairly steep, so I recommend snowshoes that have side and bottom crampons in addition to toe crampons.
Comments