The End of Fall- With One Snowfall

It was early November when Vanessa contacted me to hike to Old Snowy Mountain. I had just gone up there a few weeks prior with Jibin, but with some snowfall in the recent few days I knew this would be a completely different experience.

That is if the road to the trailhead was even going to be drivable.

We both did some schedule arranging and were able to start planning for the hike to happen in just a few days out.

Previously I had hiked Old Snowy in the prime months of August, September, and October. But getting into the month of November for this year (and most years) meant I needed to do some research on the weather conditions and dangers. This internet thing has quite a bit of good resources for that. Picking up the phone and calling the local ranger station is still hard to beat though.

The ranger gave us a go, as long as we were prepared for driving and hiking on snow and ice.

It didn’t take long to get into the snow and ice. There were a few other groups of hikers who also made it out which meant we had a packed boot trail to follow in.

For a while, at least.

About a half mile before reaching the PCT junction was where the group before us turned back and from there we were on to blaze our own trail.

We spent some time on and around the PCT, and made the decision that this was going to be our final destination for the day. It was overcast and occasional snowfall as we were losing daylight. I didn’t know if we were going to see any sunset, but then we got a break in the clouds with the perfect timing.

Vanessa was showing off her headlamp’s green color and I set mine to red which instantly put us in an early Christmas mood. Of course I started singing Carols right away haha.

I really do enjoy hiking in the snow and was super glad to be able to take Vanessa on her first snowshoe hike!