Snowshoeing!

I figured the weather Saturday would be crappy for riding, so I headed over to Hurricane Ridge with two gals on our cycling team to do some snowshoeing. It's been four years since I've been snowshoeing and I've been dying to get out, but it's just not the sort of thing I'm eager to do solo. I haven't been to Hurricane Ridge in years and neither Karly nor Julie had been, so we figured it would be a great place to go.

We headed out on the Edmonds ferry at 11:30 but when we finally got to the gate at the base of Hurricane Ridge Rd, the ranger told us they had closed the road about 15 minutes before we got there. Bummer!! He said it's pretty rare that they close in the middle of the day, but up top there were 60mph winds and the snow was dumping. Cars coming down had about 12"-18" of snow on them. Yikes!

We headed back down to the 101 and ended up going to Deer Park, which is just a bit east of Port Angeles. We drove as far as we could and then got out and hiked about 2-3 miles up the road on snowshoes. The weather was great, the wind was calm, and we even had some snow so it turned out to be a beautiful trek. I think it took us about 2.5 hours to do 5.5 miles.

My hamstrings were shot from Friday's gym workout, so it was extra challenging but a great workout. I forgot how taxing snowshoeing is, but it's so much fun!