Tronsen Head, Haney Meadow Loop Snowshoe — Friday, Feb. 16, 2024

Beautiful day out at Blewett Pass on Friday! I went up to Tronsen Head via what seems to be called Haney Meadow Loop Snowshoe, which I did not know at the time I did it :)

First I want to say many thanks to Birb - I got the inspiration to do this from his trip report on Diamond Head. I was going to do Diamond Head, then they mentioned that views are better at Tronsen Head, so since this was going to be my first time off Blewett Pass in the area to the south, I grabbed a reasonable looking GPX off Peakbagger and off I went. I didn't know it at the time but this GPX was from kidz wont hike, which I realized by looking at trip reports in more detail after my trip :P So thanks to kidz wont hike as well!

I did the loop in clockwise direction, mostly following the "standard" pattern except with one royally (TM) stupid detour described below. One thing I highly recommend to any people doing this trail is, besides grabbing the GPX, download the map of snowshoe/XC ski routes for Blewett pass into your phone, or take a picture of them at the trailhead. It's just another resource in your navigation and while most of the time the markings were excellent, there are places where they are not sufficient. I had a GPX trail too in my phone and my watch records the trail back for additional back-up, but still if I had paid more attention to the XC ski routes map I wouldn't have done my stupid detour below.

Anyway, I followed the route that goes on FS 7245 close to the end of the road first. I started climbing right after crossing the (dry?) drainage shown on the map immediately to the north east of Tronsen Head, staying on the east side of the drainage. At first, it was tough going with snowshoes because there was a bunch of fresh snow and my snowshoes struggled to grip on the uphill slopes, but fun exercise. However, about 200 ft elevation below the ridge, the slope steepened significantly and the going got really tough. Finally for about a 100 ft segment, I had to take my snowshoes off, pack them onto the pack, put on microspikes, take my ice axe and self-belay myself up the slope. It was very safe, the ice axe held super firm when driven into the icy crust, but it took me probably 20+ minutes to make the switch (take snowshoes off, pack them onto the back of the pack together with poles, put on microspikes) and then another 20 minutes at the top to switch back to snowshoes. Since it was 27-29 F on a north-facing slope that wasn't receiving the sun and my feet were constantly in the snow, I did not enjoy this "snowshoe packing exercise break". If I do this again, when ascending I would make a longer arc in the south east direction so that the slope never gets too steep - that would have been more "steady cruising". Perhaps it's also my noobiness that I had to self-belay on this segment.

I then followed the ridge up to Tronsen Head which was absolutely magical - wide views to both sides of the ridge, beautiful snow-crusted trees and flowers on the ridge. One thing to note is that the ridge has a lot of fallen logs. I've read and been careful to watch out for tree wells around standing trees, but in fact on this trip I learnt that tree wells under fallen trees are as much a big danger. I am over 6ft and once I fell to my chest deep into a tree well under one of them. Lesson learnt, respect the fallen logs :)

I went down Tronsen Head and while I had originally planned to go up Windy Knob, I decided I didn't have enough energy for that and should instead cruise back to the trailhead. It was at this point that I made the stupid decision to go down the drainage between Windy Knob and Tronsen Head, thinking it's a "shortcut" and in fact more conservative choice, which I learnt the hard way was in fact the not-conservative choice. The problem is that the slopes surrounding the drainage immediatelly around it can get pretty steep, funelling you into the drainage. This V-like set-up is a magnet for blowdowns that block the "route" horizontally, big logs that's both hard to go under and over. So I had to frequently scramble up one side or the other to go around the blowdowns, on pretty steep slopes. I had to take the snowshoes off and take on microspikes again. I am guessing that for experienced mountaineers this would be annoying but piece of cake but for me, the feeling of being funneled into this one highly questionable route and having basically no other choice was really not a good feeling. At the point I had realized this was a dumb move I was perhaps one quarter down and it was not clear that I had the energy in me to slog it back up those steep slopes, so I committed to make it all the way down, which I did. But I would not do this again ever and it gives me a newfound appreciation for those folks that clear the blowdowns off Blewett trails, I might volunteer during the next round.

After I made it down the drainage back on the trail following FS 7245, it was a relaxing walk back to the trailhead.

Despite the annoying scramble down the drainage, it was otherwise an awesome day and I would recommend this loop to any folks looking for new snowshoe trails!