I’m not gonna lie, this trail looked a lot easier on the two dimensional paper map when my hiking partner and I chose it. This trail is steep, steep, steep. It is comparable to the Wagonwheel Lake trail, which similarly doesn’t utilize hardly any switchbacks to lessen the grade. There are no real issues on the trail at the moment, just one blowdown to hop over, and a couple small patches of snow, so it is in great condition. The weather was a bit of a different story, as we hiked our way into the clouds and out of the views. The fog was basically smothering the entire forest and made it quite eery for most of the hike. We waited around for an hour at the summit hoping to sneak a peak at Lake Cushman below, but the clouds just never cleared up. Oh well, can’t complain too much since we were able to get some good old fashioned exercise out in the fresh mountain air.

Second car in the lot at 6:45 am this morning. Armed with determination (I have tried this cursed trail twice in the winter, and still hadn't reached the summit), I set off. At Horse Camp, I decided to go left, even though I knew there would be snow. I had the offline map downloaded, so felt fairly confident. Well, Gaia was misbehaving (lesson learned; a real compass and paper map would be great), and once at the snowfield, I lost the trail and the footprints, and didn't feel comfortable pushing on alone. It was then that I met the lovely human who posted the review below! I was very lucky, since she had AllTrails and was able to locate the trail! The rest of the way up was uneventful. Really, once you are through that one snow section, the rest is snow-free. 

Got quick glimpses of the lake at the summit, but clouds rolled in. Continued on the loop clockwise and was pleasantly surprised that the back half of the loop was mostly snow-free and easy to follow. This half has trail blazes...not sure why the other half doesn't?!?! Regardless, it was a gentle descent through gorgeous forest. Trail in general can be a bit slippery on the descent...dry dirt and scree is just as slippery as ice/snow in my opinion! 

A beautiful hike today! I started around 7:30am and was the third car in the lot. The trail was pretty dry and a bit dusty/gravely in spots. I went clockwise around the summit loop. There was still a pretty big area - quarter mile? - of snow to navigate; a gps map was very helpful as the trail isn’t obvious. Snow was stable this the morning and I didn’t need traction, but poles were helpful. No postholing which was nice! If you turn right at the summit loop, there is snow that way too but it may be easier to follow the trail and it is less steep. Overall it’s a beautiful hike that is a bit relentless in the climb but the views are worth it!

Privy was getting pretty full and there wasn’t toilet paper. You may have better luck at one of the privy’s on the road by the day use areas.

I was back at my car by 11:15am and the small parking lot was full but there is more parking on the forest road and would just be a short walk to the trailhead.

Happy trails!

First, a hike-u:

A great hike with kids!

There was some snow on Mt. Rose

But it wasn't bad.

My family hiked to the summit of Mt. Rose, kids aged 4 & 8 walking every step of the way, which was a record for both of them in altitude gain. And they both loved it, with enough fun things along the way, such as counting switchbacks, the frequent whump whump sounds of the blue grouse, route finding in the snow, stream crossings, and following the orange diamond trail markers on the way down. We hiked the summit loop clockwise, going up on the steeper route on the left, and down via the longer route on the other side. Both routes had some snow, a bit more on the way up, but it was consolidated and hard and postholing wasn't an issue. On the way up, we could pretty much follow the clear bootprints up, and only had one place we lost the route temporarily and needed to retrace. The way down to Horse Camp on the longer route is well marked with orange diamond markers which were a huge hit with my kids -- you could often see the next 3 or 4. Nevertheless, we somehow managed to veer off to the left too much at one point, losing both the bootprints and trail markers, and started heading down a valley that would have led us into a creek if we hadn't realized and corrected. 8 hours total time, probably around 7 hours hiking time.

Snow on the trail after Horseshoe made way finding difficult. We were glad to have footprints of previous hikers to follow. Even with that, we veered off course at least twice.

View from the top was beautiful. The trail was not crowded.

Would recommend hiking poles, especially for the way down. #saveyourknees