Lodge Lake Snowshoe Hike

Christmas Day 
December 2014

A bit of blue sky near Lodge Lake

Finally Snoqualmie Pass is getting some snow - not enough to open the ski areas but plenty to provide a winter hiking opportunity. Since we did not get started on the trail until 1215, we were surprised to find the trail untracked after a short distance. (We passed a family group returning from a brief foray into the forest.) Once through the woods we got into the deeper snow of the ski slopes and put on our snowshoes. The trail was reasonably easy to follow; someone had been through there a day or two ago and the packed-down snow had not been totally drifted over. Near Beaver Lake we guessed wrong and followed a snowmobile track up along the east side of the stream until we had to cross it to reach the real trail (part of the Pacific Crest Trail) on the other side. We used a drift and some bushes to get across the stream and then crossed a small inlet on ice before reaching the trail. Once we were in the forest, full of tall firs covered in a thick coating of newly fallen snow, the depth of snow on the ground decreased quickly to just a few inches and we were able to stash our snowshoes behind a convenient tree. Much of the rest of the 3/4 mile downhill to the lake was

Winter shadows and Guye Peak

on the gravel trailbed and across several unfrozen streams. We passed our 1430 turnaround time before we found the cutoff to the lake, but not by much. We made up for it by not stopping for lunch, or any sit-down breaks. With the low cloudbase there was not much to see except the frozen lake. The lodge built by the Mountaineers in the 1900s had long since burned down. On the way back we saw that someone had come in behind us on snowshoes and had stopped when the trail became more rocks than snow. We didn't replace our snow shoes until we had climbed to the 3500 ft high point on the ridge above Beaver Lake and had started down. Instead of retracing our route through the woods to the trailhead, we left the trail above the parking lot and went right down through the now-thinning crowd of sledders and other snow-players. It was 1615 before we reached the car and the sun had already set. Four hours to complete a three-mile snowshoe hike seemed a bit much but we got plenty of exercise and a good dose of winter scenery.