I guess snow this is a continued theme this travel season.  With continued lockdown and travel restrictions, we must continue to be careful and explore opportunities in our local area for short vacations and getaways.

Across the United States and the Seattle (mountains) area, the snow has been dumping!

We decided to pack up and head for the mountains and do some heavy duty snowshoeing and hiking into the mountains and doing a little snow camping for the weekend.

It is a little tricky getting into the mountains lately, so you must plan carefully and watch the weather as Snoqualmie Pass can get closed very quickly and have blockage due to avalanche prevention.  That is the easy part.  One you get off the highway, you have to plan that all roads will be closed and blocked.

It is OK, there are always porta a potties available as long as you have a good 4-wheel drive vehicle to navigate the slippery and snow covered roads.  I recommend if you are going to hike or camp, you travel very early because these access points are super popular on the weekends and many inexperienced people combined with non 4WD vehicles jam up, get stuck and block the roads very quickly.

We packed our heavy duty backpacks which weighted approximately 45 lbs for the needed provisions and clothes and strapped on the snow shoes for a 2 mile hike into the Gold Creek pond area.

It is quite a hike and a workout as the snow is DEEP and in many of the places, you will sink 2-3 down which is very tiring to lift your knees and snowshoes up so high to take the next step.

But the views and serenity you encounter on the way, is simply amazing.  Quiet, peaceful and tranquil.

Here is a great view of Heli’s Pond which was mostly frozen when we trekked north a little to see how it would look.

Quite a beautiful place to spend a morning.

Because we had to blaze a trail through very deep snow, we could not resist the temptation to create our own sledding path!

Here is the really weird thing we found on our hikes.  These very strange grey bugs that were quite common in the snow.  Anyone know what they are?

It is also good to pack not only some good vittles to heat up some good food to replace all the calories you burned during the hikes.  The cabins get buried in the 12 feet of snow, and sometimes it can be hard to even find them in all the drifts!