Today I met Mark and Ken at the Exit 22 Park and Ride and Ken drove us to the Ira Springs Trail Head where we planned to hike to Mason Lake.
No snow yet at street level (forecast looks snowy all next week, though) but around 3,000 feet or thereabouts (I didn’t bring my Garmin today) we started to see enough snow to put on the traction devices and by the time we hit the Bandera/Mason Lake trail junction it was somewhere between a foot and two feet deep. But packed most of the way, so not bad.
The people in the photo above were ahead of us going down, I thought a picture with humans would provide a little perspective.
I did this same hike in October with George del Campo and today, with the snow, it was noticeably more strenuous. But the views in the alpine forest are awesome:
A fun hike, I know from experience this is a 7 mile round trip, about 2,400 feet of elevation gain. Just about 3.5 hours.
As I say, I didn’t bring the Garmin, because I have done this enough times, but here is what the hike looks like on Google Earth:
We may do Mt. Washington next weekend. It is a nice place to hike when there is a lot of snow, because it is mostly free of avalanche danger.
I got to babysit Finley and Camden yesterday afternoon so it has been a really nice 24 hours for lucky old me.