Snowshoeing the road on a beautiful day in February
We
were looking for another smallish scramble with a short driving time
and settled on Mount Margaret. This scramble is accessed from Exit 54
on I-90 (follow the road under the freeway, past the Gold-Creek
SnoPark, to the large turnaround area). It was almost mid-morning when
we arrived and there were already many vehicles parked along the side
of the road. The number of vehicles with snomobile trailers outnumbered
those without at least 5:1. S. Fox's site of winter scrambles indicates
that the road is a popular snomobile route and we found this to be
true. We started snowshoeing the snow-covered road
at 9:45 AM and followed it for about 3 miles. By this time, the sun had
burned off the low lying clouds and we found a nice spot for lunch. The
tree density on the surrounding slopes was, at this point, quite low,
so we started
snowshoeing cross-country towards the local maximum, the south end of
the south ridge of Margaret. We traveled along the tree-covered ridge
and eventually arrived at the false summit. We continued further along
the
ridge, descended into a saddle, and then climbed up the final snow
slopes to the summit, arriving at 2:15 PM. Margaret is a funny little
summit with a clump of trees marking her high point. We took a break to
have some food and water, and enjoy the blue sky and sun. Our ascent
route was somewhat circuitous so we decided to take a more direct route
on the descent by leaving the south ridge just below the false summit.
The snow was mush for much of the descent so we were glad to have
snowshoes. We reached the
Jeep at around 5 PM. The trip distance was about 10 miles (could be
made quite a bit shorter by taking a more direct ascent route) and
3000'
elevation gain.
Snowshoeing the road on a beautiful day in February
View of the summit from the false summit
View towards Rainier from the summit
Elain on the summit
Steve on the summit
Elain descending from the summit