Let’s start out by saying Alltrails rates this trail as “moderate”. What we soon found out is a “moderate” trail for hiking should be classified as “difficult” for snowshoe season. This trail is straight up. And up some more. And then up again.
But once you get to the top? Totally worth the fact that our hip flexors are going to be screaming at us for the next couple days.
This is not a trail we would recommend for beginner snowshoers. If you have any sort of knee injury that does not allow for you to go up or down hills easily, we’d recommend you avoid this one. Overall, the elevation gain is just shy of 1,000 feet, which isn’t bad when just hiking, but add a heavy layer of snow and it’s definitely a lot harder than it reads on paper.
You have to park at the Hessie Trailhead. There are no facilities and no parking spots other than side of the road parking. If you are the first one there, you will know you’ve arrived when the road dead-ends.
The hike is beautiful. You will cross over two bridges that, in winter, are heavily snowpacked. Having gone in the middle of March, the snow was starting to melt and we could hear the river running below us, but could not yet see the water as it was still under a heavily layer of ice and snow.
The last push to get to the lake is extremely steep. We ran into a couple people heading back down when we were almost to the top. They gave us the motivation to push through the steep incline and also gave us a pro tip that the view is best from the middle of the lake and to turn around to look back on what we just hiked up. They were right. The view was stunning. And totally worth the sore calf muscles and hip flexors the next day.
