Breaking snow shoe trail – Issaquah Alps – 1/19/16

Coyote
Coyote

This guy didn’t want anything to do with us.  I think he looked back at us with a sneer (which we probably deserved) and disappeared.

We were going to complete the hike I tried alone on New Year’s Day, up Hall Creek to Iron Horse, to junction with Garcia, then up FR9020 towards Zig Zag summit.

We didn’t count on how tough it is to break trail with snow shoes.  It is tough work, and we weren’t exactly walking on a simple, level trail.  We were going up and up on an old road and we ran into a section that was totally trashed from what looked to us like a fairly recent avalanche.This went on for quite some way – in fact, we never did get quite through it.  We hit a major road junction and turned around (see the gps/map visualization linked below)

Blowdown section
Blow down section

Like I say, it is tough going breaking snow shoe trail.  Here is what the trail looked like ahead of us:

Before
Before

And this is what it looked like after we had broken through the snow:

After
After

There is never any shortage of great views on these hikes:

View along the trail
View along the trail

As we hit the Hall Creek Trail where it intersects Iron Horse we immediately noticed what is for sure the Zig Zag Trail.  Derek went up a little way and totally confirms.

This is cool, next time we will go up Zig Zag and come down the less drastically steep way, the old road.

The hike:

http://adventures.garmin.com/en-US/by/djhiker/breaking-snowshoe-trail-between-mt-washington-and-mcclellan-butte/#.Vp7DIJXlupo

Just under 9 miles in 6 hours, a vigorous workout for sure.