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Washington Pass Overlook, North Cascades Highway


The Pass is officially closed for the season until spring. We managed to make a couple trips up Highway 20 to play in the snow. Nothing to serious, just fun stomping through the fresh snow and enjoying the clean crisp air. Our first trip up the snow was nice and deep, lovely powder. We decided to park at the Washington Pass Overlook and dropped down over the bank into the meadow. We had a few folks watching us, I am sure they thought we were going to make a mess of their nicely groomed ski tracks. The meadow is riddled with creeks and water, so this made for interesting snowshoeing. Not all the water was completely frozen yet, so we wandered back and forth across the meadow, then up and around the trees. We hopped a couple of small creek crossing successfully, then I managed to come just a little bit short of one bank and plop, snowshoe broke through the ice. Ended up falling face first into the fluffy snow, of course this means my camera came with me. Crawled up off the edge of the creek and my snowshoe and boot were one big ice ball. Broke the ice off and cleaned the camera up, then we decided we would make our way back to the truck. It was a blast and the weather was pleasant, high 20's with blue sky to our morning. When we got back to the parking area it was full up with cross country skiers using the groomed overlook area. Lots of folks out enjoying the fresh snow and great weather. Snowshoeing is a fun winter activity. Who doesn't enjoy bundling up and sweating as you drive to the trail head, or driving to the trail head and hoping out the the vehicle stripping down and putting back on snow layers, falling down in the snow, stripping off layers because you are over heated, playing in the snow, back to the vehicle to strip down once again for dry cloths, crank the heater up on high and roast yourself out as you travel back down the mountain in search of some hot food. We actually really enjoy snowshoeing, it seems like it is just a little bit more relaxing than hiking, due to we don't set any goals on how far we will snowshoe. We tend to just go until we are having thoughts that a snowmobile would be lovely about now to hauls us back to the vehicle.
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