CCC Road: Blowout Creek Trailhead — Saturday, Mar. 25, 2023

We headed out on this trail today, and there was a light layer of snow pretty fast on the road part of the trail heading up to the junction with the CCC trail. By the time we got to the junction, there was about two to three inches of slushy snow most of the rest of the way. It was easy to walk on, and we didn’t use spikes or poles. We were able to cross a a couple of the stream crossings with just poles, but we decided to turn around at one about a mile from this trail description’s end point because the river was deeper, faster, and the bank to get down to it looked a bit slick with the snow. We probably could have made it across okay, but we tend to err on the side of caution, so we turned around. The sun came out when we were walking back, so it had melted much of the snow on the road portion, and the mountains were now on view the whole walk back down. We finished just under 5 miles instead of the full 7. (Instead, we walked down the road and did the Oxbow Loop to get a little more mileage in.) It was still a beautiful, secluded trail—only saw three other people.