I got a nice pair of snowshoes from my wife for Christmas. I had never been snowshoeing, and was dying to use them. I love hiking and it’s really hard walking in a foot of snow in regular old hiking boots. With the snowshoes I get a good base workout and get to see the back country in a different way, loaded with snow.
A friend of mine invited me to head out early Friday morning to the S. Boulder Creek trail which trail head starts at the Moffet Tunnel on the East side of the Continental Divide. I’ve been up to the tunnel, but never been on the trail. It leads up to many lakes and above timberline. At the start of the trail head there was only about 2-3 inches of new snow. We got getting first tracks since we were starting at 8am.
Our goal was to get to timberline and see how we feel. As we got closer to timberline, the depth of snow was getting deeper. At the top there was at least 12inches of fresh snow and any trail we had followed along the way was snowed over. It was much harder to get through the snow, and after 3 hrs of hiking with 2400ft ascent we were tired. About another mile west and we would have been at some frozen lakes. Next time we’ll get there.
After a quick lunch, we headed back down, and finished the hike at 5:25hr. It was a great day out and a perfect maiden voyage on my new snowshoes.
I brought my GPS, but it had some trouble picking up a signal, so the path is broken up a bit. You can still get a idea where we went.