Day Hike - West Fork Foss Lakes

Road conditions: it is 4.1 miles from Highway 2 to the Necklace Valley trailhead parking lot where we started. The last mile of that is snow-covered, but any high clearance, AWD drive vehicle can make it fine (and will probably be desired just for the potholes in the gravel road). There are clear tire treads for 2 miles from Necklace Valley trailhead towards West Fork Foss River trailhead until a major tree blowdown blocks the road. There was one Subaru with tire chains parked there, so it seems doable.

We started at about 9am from the Necklace Valley trailhead parking lot with our group of 6 Mountaineers. It was below freezing with clear blue skies.

Road walk: The pit toilet at the parking lot is closed for the season. We road walked 2.8 miles from the Necklace Valley trailhead to the West Fork Foss Lakes trailhead. The first 2 miles is technically open to traffic, but only one car passed us during our round trip, so I consider it safe for walking, and it was quite pleasant and picturesque with the stream crossings and mountain views. Tire treads were initially down to the dirt, so we were able to walk without microspikes. We put them on after half a mile, where the road splits, and the snow/ice coverage on the road turned from patchy to consistent. There were still tire treads, but they were icy. While moving to the side and taking his backpack off, one of our members became distracted and didn't notice a patch of ice and slipped and fell hard. He fell on his butt and elbow and banged his elbow pretty hard. It was not injured, and the person was fine after a few minutes. There is evidence of some recent tree sawing and removal from the road, but the major tree down at 2 miles was apparently too much. Snow on the road was pretty dense as if it had gone through several freeze-thaw cycles or was a mixture of snow and rain, so you only sink down a few inches; snowshoes are definitely not required. There were a couple of major tree blow down, but we were able to scramble under or over. Shortly before reaching the West Fork Foss trailhead, there is a stream crossing across a concrete stream release. The crossing is about 30 feet wide and water is 2-3 inches deep. One person did go upstream and find suitable rocks to step across, but the rest of us simply walked across in our waterproof boots.

Trail hike: The trail was 1.6 miles to Trout Lake. Truly a beautiful winter wonderland with streams and mountain views + a perfect blue sky. Packed snow the entire way, though it can be very thin in patches where the tree canopy is dense. It has been 2 weeks since the last snow and with freeze-thaw cycles and the sub-freezing temperatures in the morning, the snow was packed making travel easy without sinking in too much. The trail is pretty evident in most places, but we briefly lost the trail a few times and had to consult our GPS map for route finding. There were a couple of major tree blow downs and we had to detour well off-trail to get around them.. The steepness of the last mile to the lake was a big contrast with the long flat road walk. But it was worth it when we got to Trout Lake and found a nice log and clearing near the bank for lunchtime and soaked in the sun. We reached the lake at 11:40 am. On our return, with all of the sun and warming, snow softened a bit, but boots and gaiters were fine; never did I think we needed snowshoes. We did not see any other hikers all day. We returned to the cars at 2:30 pm.