In an effort to meet new friends and get out to explore new places, I joined a group, the Pacific Northwest Outdoor Women (PNWOW) and signed up to go to one of their snowshoe meet ups at Crystal Mountain Resort. I am counting this as Hike 3/52 since snowshoeing is essentially hiking with more equipment.
Distance: ~3 to 4(ish) miles
Time: 2-3 hours
Difficulty: Easy/Moderate, depending on how far you travel
Dogs: Allowed
While planning, there was discussion of people bringing their male partners and pups, but when we arrived Brighton was the only guy there. Poor dude— at least he was a good sport about it!
Normally, I do research and plan out the hike and timing, but this time I went in relatively unprepared, with just the equipment we needed ready.
When we arrived, we met up with the 10ish other women and they handed us purple bandanas to signify that we were part of “the group” and got ready by putting on our snowshoes. Some of the women had snowshoed while this was the first time for some others.
Our leader checked in with the ski patrol to make sure we were accounted for and to verify our path. We hiked up along the edge of the ski resort into a snowy road where skiers were not doing runs. The initial climb to that road was the steepest part.
We traveled along the road until there was a couple breaks in the trail — one of them went to a little hut (which we never saw) and a smaller, less obvious trail went up the mountain side, switching between views of the mountain, crossing small rivers, and being amongst the trees. We were just along for the ride, and I didn’t worry too much about the distance or timing, but it was about 3-4 miles round trip based on our timing and everyone comparing their data.
Since the weather called for rain, we decided not to bring the camera and use Brighton’s phone for photos.
It snowed almost the entire time, but it was so nice to get out into nature and meet similarly-minded women with the same interests.
Hooray for new mountains, new trails, and new friends!