A beautiful day for a hike today with our first snow of the season. Limited views due to clouds but still worth it. Maybe we come back tomorrow and get luckier with the views.
We were the only car at the trailhead at about 10:40am, and still the only car on the way back at about 12:30am. In other words, we had the hike to ourselves.
The road was in a good condition, barely any snow and some potholes especially about 6 mins from the trailhead but doable without any issues.
On the trail, there was maybe 1 inch of snow on the bottom, and up to 4-5 inches on the top, but much of the trail had either thin snow or no snow. No tracks. It wasn't slippery at all, so there was no need for microspikes, mostly either soft snow (near the top) or crumbly chunks on the bottom. Could run most of the way down without a single slip though.
The views to the north were slightly open, and we could see parts of Chair Peak and Snoqualmie Mountain, but most of the peaks were hidden (we could see the bottom but not the top). Couldn't even see Granite. Maybe 90 degrees around north the views were pretty nice, with the new snow all over. The rest, especially towards south, was covered by clouds from top to bottom but for a few minutes I could see Tinkham. I waited for a bit to see if things are going to improve but it didn't look that way so we turned back.
A nice, short hike. 2.95 miles, 1,146 feet total ascent, and 1:30 total moving time. On the way up it was easy to stay warm, just had on a sweat shirt, but put the top layer on the way down to avoid getting cold (got bit sweaty on the way up). Our first hike in a while that did not involve any lakes.
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