White Pine Lake in the Winter

Having lived in Utah for several years now, I have had a hankering to try hiking during the Winter months. In the past I have tried once or twice, but could only get so far before I was post holing up past my knees. Let me tell you, when you have to pull your feet out of holes as deep as your knees with every step, hiking becomes much less fun and a whole lot more like a workout with my wife's trainer. Luckily for me, my wife understands my desire to get out and wander around anytime of year, so she and the kids gave me a pair of snow shoes. No more post holing for me!

My first real opportunity to give them a go came in mid-January when my next door neighbor, Tim, found out I had them. As we had just had a good snow fall he suggested we take Saturday morning and head up towards White Pine Lake and break them in right. Anytime you hike with Tim, the day will start early. Fortunately he was gentle on me, setting the start time at 5:45 am.

With just a bit of coffee in me we headed out in Tim's jeep to the trail head, which is up Little Cottonwood Canyon and just below the Snowbird ski resort. The snow was falling at a decent clip as we headed up the canyon and we had to wait for a couple of minutes while a snow plow cleared the trail head parking lot. With the plow out of the way, we turned on our headlamps
and headed out. This picture of Tim was taken about 20 minutes into the hike as the sun was just starting to add a little light to the surroundings. As you can see the snow was still falling although it had slowed quite a bit.



Being the first ones up the mountain, there were no tracks from others to follow, which only added to the experience for me. The morning was very quite and, with the snow still lightly falling, any sounds from the road below were muted. In addition, the snow takes the color out of the surroundings and makes for an environment of contrasts where things appear black and white, with spectacular shades of blue thrown in. You can compare these images with those below from a hike up to Red Pine Lake.



As the morning continued to brighten and the snow trailed off, we would get beautiful shades of orange along the ridge lines. I tried to capture the image, but my skills with a camera and really cold fingers was not enough to compensate for the glare coming off of the snow. All things considered though, I am still pretty happy with the images I brought back.



As Tim needed to be back by 10am, we had to head back down before actually making it up to the lake. However, given the beautiful Utah morning and the opportunity to try out my new show shoes I was pretty tickled with the day. In the end, I would say the expression on Tim's face in this picture pretty well sums up my feelings!