Did the trail to Snow Lake following the standard trail (shared with Snow Lake). The road from I-90 is fine, with maybe just a tiny bit of slush. Quite a few cars parked at the Alpental lot, but with no skiing yet, there was plenty of room. The USFS restroom was open, but in pretty dire condition and with no TP. Alpental was closed so the WSDOT public restroom at the pass might be your best bet. Was a pretty day with dramatic shifts between sun, fog and even a little snow. Highs in the mid-30s, but as usual, once we got moving it felt pretty warm. Snow cover is quite light for this time of year. At the start, the trail is only intermittently covered. By the end, there was maybe a foot on the ground, but the path was well packed down with only a few icy spots. We did very well in snow boots with microspikes, but most people seemed to be getting along fine with hiking boots or even sneakers. After we veered off the Snow Lake trailhead to get to Source Lake, the footing was a little trickier (probably due to less traffic and the slope along the cliff wall), but still not a big deal. Above the lake, the trail kind of splits into a couple of mini-trails, but we gave up where we had a good view of the lake. Nike easy hike for this time of year - there may be avalanche danger later, but right now the snow cover was low enough that it was not an issue.

I couldn't make it to the parking lot -- I got very close (the snow is decently groomed on the Alpental ski road), then my Prius could not handle the ice. Luckily there was a nearby parking lot full of about ten jeeps with off-road tires, and a very nice guy towed my Prius over a patch of ice to the parking lot. I decided to turn around and not risk even icier conditions later (I arrived about noon). I did see other passenger cars in the lot, but perhaps they were four-wheel drives like Subarus? If you want to take a front-wheel drive, I recommend chains for the back tires.

I brought my snowshoe but didn't put it on. Easy snowshoeing trail for family outing but you should check avalanche condition before you hit this trail. An avalanche happened today near chair peak and I saw a rescue helicopter flied over the area to search victims. More stories and pics on this trip @ http://rblr.co/A7TG

Couple of pictures from this snowshoe trip: http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbandisturbance/sets/72157633015712984/ This was only my forth snowshoe trip ever, so I am still learning :-) We parked the car at the lot by the Alpental resort and then walked a few hundred yards to the trailhead. Followed the river for a mile or so and then veered left uphill where it looked like there was a snowshoe path. There was a lot of snow right form the parking lot, so no problems with that. I find orientation generally more difficult when snowshoeing than on summer hikes but we had a GPS and roughly knew where we were going. Weather was pretty dismal, snowing and fog but we made it up to Source Lake which almost wasn't visible because of snow cover. It's not much of a lake anyway, probably what they call a tarn, very small. Didn't take us very long to get there, 1.5 hours maybe so we went a bit further on to the viewpoint I took the panorama picture at. From there it would only have been just over half a (very steep) mile or so to get up to the ridge to see snow lake but the weather got much worse at that point so we turned around. Still a very nice trip and a good day to be out - hooray for waterproof clothing :-)

A short drive, a short hike, and beautiful scenery! We took the Snow Lake trail to get above Source Lake, then climbed about another 600 ft. to the divide between Snow and Source Lakes. Gorgeous! We returned via the valley floor to avoid the avalanche slopes on the Snow Lake trail.