I got a late start on Saturday and figured that I would scout out this trail in the hopes of night hiking the next morning and reaching Sunrise to photograph stars and the sunrise.
I am SO glad that I scouted this out first in daylight before attempting it at night. The first couple of switchbacks are mostly clear and then become completely snow-covered. Never having hiked this trail before, I pulled out the trust GPS and basically cut a straightish line up the hill to where I might find the next switchback. Somewhere along here, I put on the snowshoes due to postholing and lost my hat. After a bit, I stumbled across the next switchback, but then lost it after about ten minutes of hiking.
Shortly after that, with the guidance of my GPS, I navigating my way towards where the trail should have been. I stayed pretty close to it, though at one point I ended up hiking up a ravine, which was all sorts of fun to climb out of. After this, I wandered in the direction of where the trail should be. I came across one little "1 mile" marker on a tree and that was the last I saw of anything that resembled a trail.
Unable to find the trail and, therefore, cross the stream that really needed to be crossed, I figured that I would try to just climb up the ridge. I was only about 150 vertical feet below the Sunrise Rim trail. After removing the snowshoes and kicking in steps on a thin section of snow, and then having the whole section with me on it slide down about fifteen feet, I decided to choose life.
The summary here is that I don't recommend hiking to Sunrise via this trail for at least another two weeks, at which point the road will probably be open.
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