The plan for today’s trip was to head to the lower Cottonwood Meadows trailhead and walk up as far as we could until we hit enough snow and then put on our snowshoes and go as far up as we could. The day was different than I was expecting but it was an incredible day. I normally only consider hikes over 10 miles to be considered “epic”, but I’m making an exception for this one. Walking on a frozen lake was pretty epic!

We headed out at our usual time and made good time to the trailhead. The roads were not icy, and the 4635-120 spur which was REALLY soupy and slippery last time I was up here in December. Due to the cold temperatures and the lack of rain we’ve had for the last couple of weeks, the road was frozen – it was so dry we were actually kicking up dust! We parked at the turn near the trailhead, suited up and headed up the hill.

The lower part of the trail is a bit steep, and there are quite a few downed logs on it, but it wasn’t too bad until we got to the cut/burnt (I’m not sure why, but there is an open area partway up the hill) – at the north edge of that area, there was a HUGE tree that came down – much of it on the tread – the trail is under here somewhere:

We stopped to do a little clearing of that mess but it needs a LOT more help – at least now you can walk up the tree and we cleared one spot to get back on the trail. It isn’t great, but it is much better than it was. After doing that bit of clearing, we continued up the hill.

It is right around a mile up the trail where it begins to enter an old cut. It was shortly after this where the snow began. It wasn’t bad, but as we ascended the hill to the 265 spur, it got deeper quickly. We donned our snowshoes at this point. We had noticed some footprints earlier, but once out in the open in the deeper snow it was a lot easier to see them:

We were curious how far they went. We followed them up to basically the crest of the 265 spur – it looked like they went over to a small knoll – not exactly sure why – there wasn’t really a view from there. But that is where the footprints stopped. From here on, we were breaking trail:

We continued up the road and followed the recently flagged route thru the cut area. This route follows a short section of original tread thru an uncut area:

It then heads near some beautiful old cedar groves which is kind of cool:

Just path the cedar groves there is an open area that was sunny. It seemed like a good spot for lunch so we walked over to some old logs and had lunch.

After lunch, we packed up and continued up the flagged route thru the cut and soon re-entered forest. We went thru a well flagged route and soon ended up on the 240 spur, which had quite a bit of snow on it:

We crossed the road and soon arrived at the third meadow which looked very different in the snow:

You couldn’t really see the trail but it was easy enough to follow the general route (up the east side of the meadow). When you exit the third meadow, there is a very small area before re-entering the woods:

After that small “meadow” (not sure what to call it), you re-enter the woods for a bit and then come into the second meadow, which is kind of in two parts – a smaller part (the south end):

A small brushy spot in the middle and a larger meadow part (the north end):

When I was here last fall this area was flooded so we had to walk around. Today, we were able to walk right over it – it was kind of cool.

After exiting the second meadow, the trail re-enters the woods and continues its slight climb. You soon get to a decent sized lake – the maps do not name it but we usually call it Cottonwood Meadows lake:

We walked over to the edge of the lake and it was pretty frozen so we took a few gentle steps out on it. It was obvious it was frozen pretty solidly. I’m sure the air temperature was still below freezing. The dogs just charged off across the lake while the three of us took our time but it was very clear it was safe to walk on it. It was really cool to be walking across a frozen lake:

That was the first time I’ve ever done that! Quite a unique experience. We decided that we would be safe and mostly stay in the shadows on the south side of the lake, but we did walk all the way across the lake. It gave you a unique view of the lake from the east side:

We continued our path around the east side of the lake and made our way around to the north end of the lake. I’d always wondered where the old campsite was – Zack said he had seen it years ago but couldn’t remember exactly where it was. We looked around and found a potential spot but there was too much snow on the ground to be sure. There were some VERY large trees in that area though. We continued across the un-named creek that headed north and we soon found what appeared to be old tread which was soon confirmed by old flagging and more importantly, old blazes:

The trail used to head north from the lake but at some point it was re-routed to the west on the north side of the lake. That old segment of trail didn’t go too far before it dumps out into a cut area. At that point, we decided to head back to the current trail. We wound our way back west and found a road which we followed until the spot where the trail crosses it. We followed the trail west to the first meadow, which was frozen over just like the others:

We walked right across it and made it up to the northern trailhead which is right across the 5830 road from the Rimrock trailhead:

Zack needed to get back so we quickly turned around and headed back down the trail. It was a bit easier since we had already broken trail and it was mostly downhill. Even with broken trail, snowshoeing is still a lot more tiring than hiking – you use different muscles and you have to pick your feet up a lot higher when walking.

When we got back to the first meadow, I had been wondering where the big rock was – someone had put a cairn on top of the big rock to mark the trail. We were thinking this small bump in the snow was that big rock (it is hard to even see it – it is just a bump in the snow):

This is the first meadow when it is dry (late summer and fall) – You can see that rock in the distance – it is probably two feet high at least:

I think it was about at this point where Zack took off ahead of us. Both Kirk and I had some snowshoe issues and had to stop to fix them. He continued down the trail since he needed to get home. We got our issues fixed and continued down the trail. There was a short section of trail we didn’t hike on the way up – this was the spot from the lake up to the road crossing – Zack had graciously broken that trail for us, although he missed the trail skirting the edge of the lake. We didn’t see any tracks there but we did see tracks where the trail re-enters the woods partway down the lake. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, although we were getting tired.

When we got into the cut area south of the 240 spur crossing, I decided to take a picture to show how far we were sinking in places. Even with snowshoes on, we were sinking a foot in places – the snow was pretty fluffy in spots:

From there until we got back into the woods at the south end of the 265 spur we kept our snowshoes on, but at that point the snow quickly disappeared and we took off our snowshoes for the rest of the trip. We were hoping to get back to the truck by 4:00 but we missed that by a little bit. I think we got back to the truck at 4:15 or 4:20 – still well before sunset.

It was a fantastic day out. It doesn’t get much better than blue skies in the snow and then you throw in the experience of walking across the frozen lake and it made for quite a memorable day.