Where Curiosity Takes Me: Keechelus Lake - John Wayne Trail Snowshoe

I'm slowly working my way into the Cascades to see what it has to offer so we packed up our snowshoes and headed out to Snoqualmie Pass. The Keechelus Lake - John Wayne Snowshoe is right after the ski resort at Snoqualmie as you follow I-90 east towards Eastern Washington and it goes along the west side of Keechelus Lake (that big lake to your right when you're driving on the freeway). I'm confused as to whether it's called the Keechelus Lake trail, the John Wayne Trail, or the Iron Horse Trail! It seems all of those are intertwined somehow. I got the idea to go here from WTA and they call it the Keechelus Lake - John Wayne Snowshoe ...so that is what I shall refer to it as!

The trail starts at the Hyak Sno-Park and you need a permit to park here. Before we got to the park we stopped in North Bend to buy our day pass because we weren't sure if the parking lot was staffed and could buy them there. It turned out you can buy your permits at the Hyak Sno-Park, just get in line on your way in to park! A day permit is $20 but you must have a Discovery Pass to pair it with. Without a Discovery Pass you can buy a Season Sno-Park Permit for $40 good for all winter. Some sno-parks, like the Hyak, are groomed so a regular season permit will NOT work for these 8 sno-parks alone. You must buy the Season Permit ($40) AND a Special Groomed Trails Permit (another $40), that's $80 for the season is you plan to snowshoe at any of the 8 special groomed trails. A nice perk about the day permit , though, is that you only need that one pass and it will cover the special groomed trails for the day as well.

The 8 special groomed trails are:
Cabin Creek, Chiwawa, Crystal Springs, Hyak, Lake Easton, Lake Wenatchee, Mount Spokane, Nason Ridge.

Being my first time to a sno-park I was surprised to see all the activity! There are areas for children to sled and play and the trail was very wide and groomed allowing much room for all the people participating in winter activities. There were tons of people out there, I've never seen so many people with cross country skiis, probably because I've never been to a place where you could X/C ski. Being a snowshoer we stayed off to the side of the groomed trail, mainly meant for the X/C skiiers, but there were many snowshoers out there also so the narrow trail on the bank was well defined also. They had a tent set up with hot coco, which we planned to stop on the way back but they were already gone by the time we finished.

The groomed trail is very boring. We know this because we came back on the main trail...it's flat and straight and you only get a couple peekaboos of the lake through the trees. What we did, and by the looks of the trail so did most other snowshoers, was go down the road towards the boat launch so we were able to hike along the lake and away from all the skiiers. At the launch we followed the trail that ended up climbing up the bank to the ski highway. A few minutes later, becoming bored of the main trail, we slid down the embankment to go back towards the lake and found the other snowshoe route that stayed along the lake...much better.

It snowed non stop the entire time we were up there making it a difficult to notice the cars zooming by on I-90 across the snow covered Keechelus Lake. You could hear them a little bit, but I only noticed them when I was trying to notice. Once we got on the trail along the lake we only crossed paths with one other couple coming the opposite way. It was so serene, we were far enough from the main path that we couldn't see or hear anyone.

Never would I have expected to see myself on the other side of this lake...I don't think I realized you could go over there before. Hiking in the Olympic Mountains I am used to being farther away from civilization, we're a little spoiled over there I think, so that's something I'll have to get used to in the Cascades. being closer to the bigger cities I shouldn't be surprised that there will be many more people out there.

Overall we were out there about 3.5 hours. We took our time and didn't go all the way to the end of the lake before advenuring up through the tree line back to take the road back. Maybe almost 4 miles total...I wish I had my GPS so I knew for sure!

What a great day spent outside!