Cooper River Snowshoe — Monday, Jan. 18, 2016

Snoqualmie Region > Salmon La Sac/Teanaway

We tried to do the Cooper River on snowshoes. We read ehiker's report from Dec 26 and it was helpful getting started. Getting on to the trail doesn't seem to match the book. We followed what appeared to be a occasionally groomed ski trail out to a summer trailhead. The ski trail hadn't been groomed in a while. There was lots for fairly new snow - I guess there was some on Saturday and maybe Sunday January 16-17. There were recent tracks to follow for a while, which made travel pretty easy. We slowed down considerably once we were breaking trail. There appeared to be a remnant of trail that we were following. Our tracking software indicated we went 2.3 miles from the car. Eventually the slope we were traversing got steeper than we were comfortable with and we came to a tree we couldn't get around. The new snow on the trees was starting to come down more and more, as well. It was a nice outing, even if we only made it about half-way. The trail is close to the river at the start, but not very closer later on. We could see it again where we started. Didn't see any wildlife. On our way out we saw a few more couples, following the now well defined tracks that may or may not be going the right way. The salmon la Sac road is well plowed to about 6 miles out of Roslyn, then packed snow. But our Corolla (front wheel drive, anti-lock brakes) had no difficulty.