In Too Deep
Keechelus Lake, Washington
"Nope, still too deep", was my thought as I gingerly stepped off the main trail to test the snow again and promptly felt my snowshoes sink until I was well over knee deep in the fluffy whiteness, completely unable to maneuver. As I laboriously extracted my feet and turned around to once again return to the packed snow of the main trail, I was lamenting the depth and soft consistency of the snow.
I had been lured to the mountains by the massive amounts of new snow and the chance to do my first snowshoeing of the season during a brief break in the weather after two weeks of seemingly endless storms. Usually snowshoes offer the ability and advantage of being able to walk on top of the snow and venture off trail much more easily. But on this day, even with the addition of flotation tails, they were no match for the deep, soft snow, so my explorations (and photography angles) were limited to following the established path that others before me had trod.
With avalanche risk levels rated high in the backcountry that day, I made sure to choose a trail away from steep slopes and known avalanche terrain, one which winds its way through a lovely forest of snow-laden evergreen trees to the shore of Lake Keechelus on the eastern slopes of Snoqualmie Pass. When I arrived at the parking area and headed out on the trail, the landscape was shrouded in fog, obscuring the mountains in a thick layer of mist. But as I snowshoed through the hushed world of white, glimmers of light soon started to appear and by the time I was approaching the first views of the lake (depicted in this image), the clouds began to lift and the sky lightened, eventually clearing to a brilliant shade of blue.
The air was chilly by the lake as the wind blew off the freezing water and the layer of ice that had formed along the shore. But few others had ventured all the way to the lake so for most of the time I spent there I was alone in the expanse of a dazzling snowscape.
In Too Deep
Keechelus Lake, Washington
"Nope, still too deep", was my thought as I gingerly stepped off the main trail to test the snow again and promptly felt my snowshoes sink until I was well over knee deep in the fluffy whiteness, completely unable to maneuver. As I laboriously extracted my feet and turned around to once again return to the packed snow of the main trail, I was lamenting the depth and soft consistency of the snow.
I had been lured to the mountains by the massive amounts of new snow and the chance to do my first snowshoeing of the season during a brief break in the weather after two weeks of seemingly endless storms. Usually snowshoes offer the ability and advantage of being able to walk on top of the snow and venture off trail much more easily. But on this day, even with the addition of flotation tails, they were no match for the deep, soft snow, so my explorations (and photography angles) were limited to following the established path that others before me had trod.
With avalanche risk levels rated high in the backcountry that day, I made sure to choose a trail away from steep slopes and known avalanche terrain, one which winds its way through a lovely forest of snow-laden evergreen trees to the shore of Lake Keechelus on the eastern slopes of Snoqualmie Pass. When I arrived at the parking area and headed out on the trail, the landscape was shrouded in fog, obscuring the mountains in a thick layer of mist. But as I snowshoed through the hushed world of white, glimmers of light soon started to appear and by the time I was approaching the first views of the lake (depicted in this image), the clouds began to lift and the sky lightened, eventually clearing to a brilliant shade of blue.
The air was chilly by the lake as the wind blew off the freezing water and the layer of ice that had formed along the shore. But few others had ventured all the way to the lake so for most of the time I spent there I was alone in the expanse of a dazzling snowscape.