Passing Scenic traffic almost came to a stop. Further up I saw why - an Outback had apparently rear ended a Dodge Ram. Pretty bad impact, the truck was sideways in the road with the rear axle almost torn off, the Subaru with it's front end smashed. Everyone was out walking around, apparently unhurt. Roads are still icy, be careful out there. I parked across from the busy ski area and started up the road. I was surprised the road was groomed. Well, sort of groomed. A snowcat had been up and leveled it, but it wasn't smoothed at all. I followed this uphill to the radio tower where it ended. From here the skiers had an established track to the top of the ridge. Nothing in sight for snowshoers, so I broke a new trail up through the trees to the bump on the ridge. Going was easy this time, the snow was great. Cushiony but supportive enough. I popped up to the top, took some photos, then dropped back down towards the lake. I wandered around through the trees taking my sweet time and distracting myself by imagining shapes in the snow loaded trees. Enough meandering and I was at the lake. It was totally covered with snow and probably frozen over too. I took some photos, skirted the shoreline, and went up the ridge behind it. Up on the ridge there are some incredible rock formations! Many stacked thin flat rocks at odd angles lay all over the place, giving the top a very cool stegoasurus like effect. One area has three pointy spikes radiating outward from a center area, almost like it was built for some sort of ritual. I poked around the rocks for a bit, keeping my distance to avoid getting sucked into some snow covered abyss between them. Some other snowshoers were on the far side, standing on a rocky outcrop. I walked around and out there too, stopping here for lunch. After lunch I backtracked around the rocks again and went as high toward the summit as I could go. I made it to a rock landing about 40ft down before calling it good. Up higher the snow was just too steep and soft to travel, even if I'd brought crampons. I dropped back to the lake before heading down. I bypassed the road this time and wove down through the trees, then ran down the open areas between road swichbacks on great soft snow. Great day of mountain therapy, just what I needed.

The snow began at the edge of the muddy parking lot on the north side of Stevens Pass. We started by carrying our snowshoes on the well consolidated snow and followed the rough closed roadway northward up the ridge. There were a few short patches of road with bare mud within the first half mile or so. As the grade steepened, we donned our snowshoes to take advantage of the crampons. We followed the roadway to the ridge with telecommunication towers SE of the lake to look out across the Stevens and Nason Creek drainages. We backtracked a couple of hundred yards, then headed NW to the lake. As we left the consolidated snow on the roadway, our snowshoes proved their worth in the softer snow 2 - 3 feet deep around the lake. Skyline Lake is still frozen over. Snowmobile tracks crisscrossed the lake and surrounding terrain. After a lunch break on a ridge SW of the lake, we headed back down. Most of us kept our snowshoes on all the way down to the snow at the edge of the parking lot. Snowshoes with steel crampons fared well, but aluminum crampons showed signs of wear on the rocks of the aforementioned bare spots. Overall, a sunny day for a 3½ hour snowshoe trip with six great people. No bugs!

Nice day for a snowshoe up to Skyline Lake. Very little wind and there was only a thin high overcast with blue sky sometimes visible. The trail (road, really) was snow-covered right from the start at the parking lot on the north side of Highway 2 (directly across from the Stevens Pass ski area). The coordinates of the trailhead are N47.74731, W121.08836 (WGS 84 datum). I did not see any signs requiring a Snow Park or Trailhead parking pass. Most of the other people parking in this lot were likely patrons of the ski area. The snow the entire way up was fairly well-packed. The main advantage of the snowshoes was the crampons they provided (especially on the way down!) I didn't make it to the lake per se, so I cannot provide a description. However, the views on the way up to the southeast through southwest were nice, and the views to the north at the top were really spectacular. On the ridge by the cell phone site (about 5200 feet) one gets nearly a 180 degree view of the mountain range to the north. The trip back down only took 30 minutes. A very straightforward and rewarding outing.

Heading towards Stevens Pass, the weather looked really wet but the snow-rain mix started at Index. At the pass there was just light snow. It had been a while seen I had snowshoed up to Skyline Lake and the ridge just to the north of the lake. A cat trail now runs from the ski area parking lot up to near the lake which made the ascent much easier. As we neared the lake, we left the cat track above the radio tower and headed on a more northerly bearing to reach a saddle on the ridge north of Skyline Lake. This is where the snowshoeing started. There was about 6 to 8 inches of fluffy snow to break trail through. At the saddle there are 2 blobs to chose from. We headed to the easternmost blob at 5447’. The wind picked up on the summit so our stay was limited to a few minutes. We retraced our track back to the saddle and then headed down to Skyline Lake for lunch. At the lake we ran into a group out for a weekend of winter travel/snow camping. The construction of shelters had started and someone had made a snow man near the middle of the lake. After a nice lunch we returned to the radio tower east and then south of the lake and then descended straight down the fall line instead of using the cat trail.

Great sunny snow shoe up the Skyline Lake trail out of Stevens Pass North side. We carried packs and dragged some sleds with overnight gear. Snow was old and hard much of the way, but snow shoes helped with the crampon cleats. We built igloos and snow caves around the shores of Skyline lake in the sunny afternoon and got a good bit of red-neck. No wind, no precip, just great sun and great times. Next day we packed out and left a massive igloo for others to use....20 man-hours of work was hard to destroy. Check it out.....