Marion's Blog

Snowshoeing at Donner Pass

Wednesday night a few inches of new snow fell at Donner Pass. Thursday morning Linda, Ray, Duke and I went snowshoeing there. We parked at the snow park on the frontage road south of Interstate 80. From there we headed generally southeast to Azalea Lake. 

The trees were all covered with fresh snow and as we hiked every so often we would hear a womp as a pile of snow fell off a tree. Some times a little bit of snow would fall  and roll down a hill. I Iiked the cinnamon roll effect you can see in this picture.

 

Azalea Lake was covered with ice and snow. It is through the trees in this picture.  Really!

Here is the GPS detail of the trip. If you would like to see all my pictures they are available on Flickr here.

Two Great Snow Shoe Hikes not Far From Reno

Tahoe Meadows to Chickadee Ridge

One of the wonderful things about living in Reno is that there are great opportunities nearby to hike in the summer and go snow shoeing in the winter. Last Thursday I went for my first snowshoeing outing of the winter. My friend Linda had only been on snow shoes once before and agreed to go along on what I told her would be an easy hike. We snowshoed from Tahoe Meadows to Chickadee Ridge. It was an absolutely beautiful day. The sun reflecting off the snow reminded us of the glitter our friend Pat sometimes uses.

The only thing was that the hike turned out to be a much more difficult than I remembered. It didn't help that we started just below the top of the Mount Rose Highway at about 8,550 feet altitude or that by the time we got to Chickadee Ridge where we could see Lake Tahoe we were at almost 9000 feet. We still had a wonderful time and Linda was a great sport even when I am sure she wasn't quite sure what I had gotten her into.

We stopped for hot chocolate and snacks on the ridge overlooking Lake Tahoe

 

Here is the view from the ridge.
 

Here is the GPS plot of our route. I guess it was a bit steep!

 

  If you would like to see all of my pictures from our trip they are available on Flickr here.

Donner Lake

In spite of our misadventures last week Linda and her husband Ray agreed to go snowshoeing again today. We snowshoed along the shore of Donner Lake in Donner Memorial State Park. It is a wonderful place to snowshoe. It is scenic and right off interstate 80 just west of Truckee. Our route was out and back and was a total of 2.3 miles.

It was overcast today and we even had a bit of wind and snow falling but it was a lot easier than last week. and we had a lot of fun.

If you would like to see all my pictures form today's hike they are available on Flickr here.

Snowshoeing at Northstar at Tahoe

My nephew and his room mate are staying with us while they ski this week. Up until yesterday they were catching a bus at the Peppermill to take them to the ski resorts. Yesterday I drove them to Northstar at Tahoe and I went snowshoeing while they skied. It was a beautiful warm day and there was still lots of snow. The lady at the snowshoeing and cross country skiing lodge took this picture before I started out.

 

Northstar charges $25 for a snowshoeing day pass. I think that is probably why I saw very few people all day. After all, you can snowshoe free lots of places so why pay.

I made a five mile loop. Many of the trails had no footprints to follow so I was following the little yellow snowshoe markers and the pink flags. There were lots of them so it was easy to find the trail by standing at a marker and looking for the next one.It was fun too.

 

There are two warming huts on the trails. I didn't stop at the caboose hut.

But I did stop for lunch on a bench outside the Swiss Hut with a fantastic view of Truckee meadows. After lunch I read my Kindle for a while with the Sun warming my back. Such decadence!

If you would like to see all of my pictures for yesterday they are on Flickr here.

Snowshoeing Donner Camp Historic Site

Today we went snowshoeing with the group from Sierra Canyon. There were only six of us. We had a lot of fun and it was a beautiful day. 

There was about two feet of new snow and as we finished up it started snowing again. Duke brought some of the home made cookies he made Saturday to share.

We parked at the Donner Camp State Historic site which is just 2.9 miles north of interstate 80 on highway 89. This is where part of the Donner party camped and died.

We were on established trails about half the time and we were breaking trail in deep new snow the rest of the time. About a half a mile from the road it started snowing lightly. It was like a picture postcard of winter. If you would like to see all of my pictures from today they are available on Flickr here.

Snowshoeing to Matrimony Ridge

Last Monday Duke and I went with the Sierra Canyon Hiking and snowshoeing group to Matrimony ridge. It was a beautiful day and a great hike. You can see the pictures on Flickr here.