Trip Report
Intermediate Snowshoe - Castle-Pinnacle Saddle
A delay in the opening of the Paradise gate due to 3" of overnight snow precip, led us to execute our Plan B to Reflection lake from Longmire and it was not disappointing.
KD Dase
- Sun, Jan 8, 2023
- Intermediate Snowshoe - Castle-Pinnacle Saddle
- Pinnacle Peak & The Castle
- Snowshoeing
- Successful
-
- Road suitable for all vehicles
-
The snow cover was minimal at Longmire, starting at Wonderland Trail and the travel was on compacted snow soon for the remaining parts of the summer trail to Narada Falls, thereafter the snow was soft needing snowshoes to the lake.
We received 5" on Saturday all day and 3" more overnight before our trip on Sunday. The snow level for us was starting at 4400' in the morning and was predicted to go down to 3300' by Sunday night. We had an overcast day with 0.25" WE precip anticipated later in the afternoon, which meant it was drizzly to start and was snowing when we arrived at the Lake and back into rain when back at the cars. We did get to enjoy many gaps between each pour.Wind slabs were the concern as stated by NWAC but there were only light winds on Saturday as it snowed and so was Sunday. We mostly were in dense vegetation except for a few sections, and the new snow was loose and got wet and heavy as the day progressed.
The creek to the Narada Falls was passable on the bridge.
A few trees were fallen down which we had to crawl under but didn't obstruct the progress.
The route finding was mostly following the summer trail and as we got closer to the Stevens Canyon road and saw some sparse trees, we took an opportunity to play in the trees. Although the trail until Narada falls was most frequented the trail to the Reflection Lake from there was not beaten and we all took turns to trail break.
We started at 9:15 am from the Wonderland trailhead at Longmire and we were at the lake by 1:15 after taking a break and detour to Narada Falls to enjoy some more scenes. We were back to the cars by 3:45 pm.