June Lake 2023 - Sure is a lot of snow this year

 

I have been to June Lake, on the South slope of Mt. Saint Helens, several times in the past decade. All of the memories I have of that trail are of difficult passages. Go to the June Lake Trailhead, in the Pinchot National Forest, in the summer (say, June) and will wonder why I might have such a bad time. There is a nice paved parking lot right off the nice road (that also runs by Ape Cave). The trail to the lake is well marked and is an easy 1.5 miles through pine and fur with maybe 500 feet of altitude gain. What is the big deal? I deal is that I have only been to this location in Winter, and so only as a snowshoe. The weather has always been a bit challenging and at least once I went with a large group where there were many people that needed help. 

This is all to say that this year, the snowshoe to the lake was even more of a slog that I remembered. But still and all, it was a great fun adventure and you might as well read along even if the going is difficult.

There has been a lot of snow in the Pacific Northwest in the last month. We have been lucking out in picking a non-snow day about once a week to try and get up to the mountains. This week we had another lucky guess and picked a day that not only didn't have (much) new snow, but even a little sunshine for lunch.  There are 4 of us going today and we are all loaded up in my trusty Subaru Forester with AWD and snow tires. I put the rocket box on the top so people could put their snowshoes up there. This is especially handy after the hike when everything is snow encrusted and frozen; keeps the water out of the car. 

As I mentioned, the road to June lake is the same road that goes to the turn off for Ape Cave. This time of year Ape Cave is "open" but it is not plowed or dug out. So good luck getting in. That is why we are going to June Lake. I was surprised at the cost of a Washington State Snow Park Pass. An Oregon pass is $5 a day. A Washington Pass is $25 a day. Wowsers. I guess we were paying for the guy that was running the snowcat to plow the parking lot. 

The drive was a bit longer than I thought, especially the part after the turn off to Ape Caves. Driving a long. There also wasn't much snow. We had our grown son along on this trip, his first snowshoe, and I was hoping for a lot of snow to show him and get him excited about the sport. But I wasn't seeing much. And then, right in front of us. An Elk. Hell, a herd of Elk (though only one standing in the road in front of us staring us down). That was sort of cool. 10 minutes further down I see a bunch of crows on the ground on the side of the road on some road kill. They all fly up as we go past and 3 of them fly down the road right in front and above the car. I look up at them flying right there 20 feet above the car and I realize that they are immature bald eagles. I flock of Eagles? Paige says that can't be true as Eagles don't do that. We could see a family of 3 however. 

Right about know is when I said, "This is just too far" and checked the map. Turns out we were going in the wrong direction. We should have taken that turn off to Ape Cave 20 minutes ago. Dammit. Of course, then we would have missed the Elk and the Eagles. It also had us drive back past that carcass. Turns out there were 3 Eagles and a Mess of Crows feeding on the thing. 

If you take the correct turn and head up the other road you get 1000 feet higher up the mountain and NOW you have snow. Lots of snow. The roads are not that well plowed and were are driving on a foot or so of compacted snow. There are places where it gets interesting even with the AWD of the Subaru. The Forester is an SUV but it doesn't ride as high as the Ford F150's that everyone else out on this road seems to drive (well, there was that one guy putting chains on his mini-van but we are going to ignore him). 

About 6 miles of snow, takes over half an hour, and we come to the end of the plowed road which is where the Marble Mountain Snow Park resides. During the winter you have to walk the rest of the way (1 mile) to the summer trailhead for the June Lake hike.  Lots of guys with big rigs pulling trailers with Snowmobiles at this Snowpark. This is not a place you bring the kiddies for sledding. The main road from here is closed but groomed and there are lots of snowmobiles driving down it. Snowmobile technology has changed a bit in the past few decades. Seems like they have more vehicles that have smaller louder engines and more narrow front ski's and real traction treads. Sort of more like a converted dirt bike, which may be what they are. 

We put on our snowshoes to walk the groomed road down to the trailhead, but we probably didn't have to. May have sunk a little in our regular shoes but not much. That all changed when we got to the sign that indicates the start of the June Lake Ski Trail. The snow there was deep and virgin. We were the first people that had tried this trail since the last major snowfall. We could see the groove in the snow that people made last week or last month, but nothing recent. We had something like 6 to 12 inches of new snow to tromp through. This gave us a great chance to practice snow breaking procedure. Mainly this means that the person out in front is doing most of the work tramping through the new snow and everyone behind him is doing a little less work until the person that is number 4 actually has a not to hard of a time. I started out in the lead and went perhaps 5 or 10 minutes. Then I stepped to the side and the person behind me (Nick) took the lead. I waited until everyone was past and then got in line at the end. So much easier at the end of the line. If we had 10 or 20 people this would have been cake. As it was, you might end up back at the front of the line before you were ready for it. 

Also I am stretching things a bit here. With 3 people in front of you, even number 4 is doing more work than it would be on a real flat trail. So we were all struggling. We also found that it is much harder to walk on these deep narrow trails if you have a pair of the big tube Snowshoes. They may be better for floating on powder, but it is hard to drive them through a narrow 4 foot deep gulch.  So the 1.5 miles from the road to the lake took us almost 1.5 hours. 1 mile an hour is pretty slow and we were all struggling. Well, all of us except the guy that drives his bike for like 30 miles a day. He was hopping around trying to find things to do whilst he waited for us. Even letting him take the lead for the last half mile didn't slow him down. 

We lost the blazes right around here

Just before we got to the lake, we lost the official trail. We had been following someone else's trail which had been following the blue diamond trail blaze markers but we went around a corner and the blaze's disappeared. The trail we were following went in some wonky directions. Clearly the guys from a couple of weeks ago trying to refind the trail (and failing). But after 100 yards of hard up and down, the trail did find the blazes again, right next to the bridge over the little creek that empties out of June Lake. 

Snow Art

One good thing about the slugging is that it encourages you to take frequent rests and look around at your surrounds. This were really amazing out in the keep snow. All of this unmarked white powder in every direction and large clusters of snow forming strange and wonderful shapes on the tops of trees and stumps. Lots of large spheres or cane heads. Big snow question marks.  Also, whenever you stopped and listened you would hear the  muffled booming of large drifts of snow hitting the ground as they fell from the sun warmed tree tops. Even standing under a big tree for too long seemed to be a bad idea as our proximity seemed to trigger the falls. I don't know if it was just random or if the vibrations from our footprints would jog things loose a bit. We all had big falls hit the trail just a few feet away from us. I don't think these big falls would have hurt us (too much) but you would have gotten 10 or 20 pounds of ice cold snow down your shirt collar.  And it could easily have knocked you down, which would not have been any fun. 

Snow Bridge

Where were we? Oh, yes, across the bridge over the creek. The bridge that has like 6 feet of snow on top of it and that is good as the trail goes over the a cliff of 10 feet of snow above the creek below. Don't slip. One last little push and you come out into a huge clearing area. Many Many Acres. Off to the right is June Lake. I think the lake is formed by a lava flow stopping the little creek and creating the small lake right at the bottom of a cliff face. I say "I think" because I have never seen the ground around here. All I have seen is the snow. I think the open area is a big lava flow. I don't even know if the trail from here is passable when it isn't covered in snow. Some of use agreed to come out this summer and check it out. Perhaps in June. 

We smashed down some snow to rest on and have our lunch. Did you know that it is a bad idea to try and walk backward in snowshoes? What happens is this: the rear of you snowshow folds down and gets embedded a little in the snow. This catches and makes you rock backward a little off balance. If you try and stop yourself, the show slides deeper into the show and grabs your more. Then you go down on your backside. Luckily you go down in the deep snow. Well, that would be luck except that you don't have anything to push on to get yourself back up. My method (yes, this happened) is to lay there absorbing the laughter of your fellows and shrug yourself out of your pack. Now you can roll over and use your pack as a foundation to push yourself back to you feet. Just like you planned the entire enterprise. 

Here are some pictures of the Lake. It is such a beautiful place and hard enough to get to that there is just about always a lot of virgin snow. I like the little waterfall and the fact that there is green moss growing down at one end. Why didn't it freeze over? I guess just because the water is flowing (though you can't see a current in the lake). Could it be heated by the volcano? I don't think so. (But we are on the side of an active volcano, so....).

Going back down to the road was a cakewalk. It was downhill and the snow had been trampled by like 10 pairs of snowshoes this time. 

The tradition of this hike is to stop in the little town of Cougar on the way off of the mountain to have dinner at the Cougar Bar and Grill. We have done that many times in the past and had decent beer and food there. This time we noticed that the big "change the letters" sign out had some new messages. From the North it read "Hot Beer and Bad Service!".  From the other direction it read "FJB Let's Go Brandon".

That may have impacted our decision to not eat there but the closer on the deal was that the place was closed. I don't know if the signage caused them to close or they put up the signs in anger after they went out of business. Sigh. No Cougar Beer for Jon.