The route starts out from North Halfmoon Creek TH wet but passable. It stays that way for about 1.3 miles up into the trees. Slowly, broken snow drifts start to appear across the trail that must be crossed/postholed. The trail is indistinguishable from about 1.6 miles in on, all snow-covered and poor trail markings on the trees. I've been on this trail several times so I knew how to get where we wanted to go by sensing, but it was VERY DIFFICULT finding any vestige of trail. The large, flat rock slabs that have had past glacial activity are the only indicators of being on the right track at times. We used snowshoes from 1.6 miles to tree-line and were very happy we did so. Temperature was such that we had base layers, pants, gaiters, hiking boots, gloves, snow hats, and medium weight jackets. We elected not to go onto the steep stuff after treeline as the snow looked iffy in the afternoon heat and we turned around. Still lots of snow up there currently. And the mosquitoes are back.
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