The Dog Walks Me

Tag: washington

  • Wanatchee Lake Snowshoe

    Wanatchee Lake Snowshoe

    Did I mention that we ended up in Washington during a crazy snowstorm? We almost lost Whiskey except for her day-glo jacket in the snow (chillydogs.ca). She can barely surface to breathe…joking!

    So I’ve seen so many beautiful photos online of this park and I was really excited to visit. Unfortunately, the worst part about this beautiful snowshoe is the parking price!! You must get a confusing number of two passes (sno-park pass and discovery pass) the total of $30 USD, for just one day of parking which becomes a very expensive hike (and we did see rangers who were checking).

    Otherwise, the park was lovely and empty besides a couple cross country skiers, and a couple visitors just taking pictures at the entrance of the lake. I suppose no one brought their own snowshoes to explore for we explored a very easy snowshoe trail with interpretive signs and met no one. The trail would normally be very easy to follow had we not had 50cms of fresh snow, but even then we had no problems at all once we found the “start”.

    From the amount of photos online of this lake, I would suspect this park is normally very popular and busy. Here’s to getting outside when everyone else is sleeping in after a snowstorm!

    In fact it was so beautiful we went a second time while waiting for the highway to open up again on our way out (there are alot of closures with the snow storms). Here are some photos the day later.

  • Mt Baker Snowshoe

    Mt Baker Snowshoe

    This Christmas holidays my mom visited and we took a little trip into Washington state to get away from the rain and into some snow. What we hadn’t anticipated was the amount of snow! Our first stop was Mt. Baker and with a fresh snowstorm, most of the trails we had wanted to try had vanished into hip-deep fresh powder hidden by 7 feet of snow banks. We did try our hardest to visit Picture Lake but this is about what we saw (assuming we were looking at the lake and not on top of it!)

    This is Picture Lake (we are probably on top of it)
    Even with snowshoes we were sinking
    Mom wasn’t too amused by our attempt to hike
    Whiskey was quite happy for her jacket!

    We eventually found a really nice and easy mom-friendly snowshoe trail to try at the Salmon Ridge Sno-Park. The trail was called Elk Snowshoe trail and crossed a couple cross country trails.

    Elk Snowshoe trail had much less snowfall
    the trail wasn’t very well maintained but it was easy to follow
    the little balls of snow are covered pebbles
    on leash while the drone flies!

    There was only one other car in the parking lot and we met no one on the snowshoe trail.

    The river is so beautiful
    A very nice easy trail
    The road to Glacier town

    The trail itself was very flat and easy with a couple obstacles and was easily done in crampons or snowshoes. The part along the river was fantastic and we even got a little drone footage.

    until next time!