Surprise and Glacier Lakes, Surprise Lake Snowshoe — Saturday, Feb. 21, 2004

Central Cascades > Stevens Pass - West

A beautiful trail on a sunny winters Sunday, and we had the trail to ourselves. At this time of the year, you park just across the rail road at Scenic. Don your snow shoes by the sign pointing to the trail head and off you go. Even at the trail head the snow is several feet deep. With no significant snow fall recently the path of prior snow shoers is easy to follow. You head up the valley following the stream most of the way following the summer route mostly. Around 2700' we crossed to the East side of the stream over a downed log with orange streamer. Rather than following the summer trail with switch backs at the steeper part of the valley, people have headed straight up the valley. We followed suit and it is a steep climb for the last 1000 ft. You do need snow shoes with crampons to get up this bit. We took about an hour to get up this section, and came down it in 15 mins! The lake is almost frozen over and beautiful. A great place for lunch. We took 3 hours up and 2h:15m hours back.