Buckhorn Mountain, Marmot Pass — Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025

Arrived at the trailhead around 8 AM with some snow at the parking lot, but no other people there. I brought both snowshoes and crampons, you could get away with either but crampons might just be easier to bring at this point with so little fresh snow. About half a mile of snow and ice appeared in patches until around 1 mile before Camp Mystery, but I just used my bare boots until then. Lots of tracks to follow to get up to Marmot Pass after Camp Mystery. Getting up to the summit of Buckhorn itself has almost no snow at all, it's either been blown away or melted and I didn't use crampons since it was bare ground. Of course Buckhorn always delivers good views from the top. The descent after Camp Mystery was very irritating, since the patchy snow had refrozen becoming slippery, but without it being consistent I had to take on and off my crampons. Overall this feels a lot more like Spring weather with lots of melted and blown-away snow, especially on the stretch from Trailhead to Camp Mystery with the annoying patches of ice.  Hopefully we get some good snow in the mountains soon because we definitely need it.