Snowshoe 3 Lady Lakes

With the obvious drought-driven problems of high Sierra snow, it seems obvious that snow activities were not the way to go this year.  But one of our members, who received snowshoes for Christmas, was not to be deterred.  Humoring him, four of us headed to the pass so he could give them an inaugural try.  Up high, we were greeted by mildly cold weather and dirty, icy, Sierra cement.  The end-of-season detritus littered the snow: pieces of broken sleds, water bottles, candy wrappers, etc.  Gravel from I-80 had made it back to the trails in splattery spumes.  We trudged around on the potato patch of foot and paw prints, snowshoe and x-c ski indentations, and even snowmobile tracks. 

Fun?  Well actually yes, as our trudging got us into the back country where  there was smooth snow once we left the part that was parallel to the freeway.  The lakes were still frozen, icicles hung from rocks, and except for the need to go on steep side slopes, the going was less hard on the ankles.  We walked to some rocks above the east side of Lake Flora and ate lunch.  The view was stupendous, our beloved mountains, although somewhat covered in snow, will be hikeable soon. 

So we had hiked in a meandering loop about 4.2 miles as we had to circumvent jumping from cliffs in our efforts to find trails we could manage.  About a mile as the crow flies. We were exhausted!!

All of us fell.  Several times.