Stories This Year with tag snowshoe

Special to The SunBreak by John Hieger.

The crunchy first step of the trailblazer is serious work; being the slouch who pulls up the rear is usually preferable unless you're in it for the glory. While the movement feels somewhat robotic at first, the good news is the superhuman abilities snowshoes provide in the face of steep grades.

The traction of my cheap rentals gripped the heavy Cascade snow like a cat to a scratching post, enabling my buddy and I to tackle steep slopes with a sense of performance-enhancing momentum.  

After a half-hour of steady climbing and uncomfortable sweat--you assume snowshoeing is going to be an ass-freezing ordeal, but in this muggiest of El Niños, a vertical gain is a sweatshop--we reached an impressive vista that opened the Icicle Creek Canyon up to the east. The "creek" coursed below the jagged peaks on each side, giving a postcard view over the cold valley below. Winter imagery in Central Washington is the stuff of marketing campaigns.

We proceeded upward, until reaching a friendly local who informed us of the trail’s name and length which ignited a spirit of retreat. Eightmile Lake in winter is the stuff of early risers, and learning this fact after a late start and a healthy investment in the trail itself would have been devastating in uglier conditions....

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