Western Washington was at the height of shoulder season – snow had fallen in the mountains but nowhere near enough for winter activities to begin in earnest. With a good forecast upon us, Katie and I headed out to the Snoqualmie Pass area for what I hoped to be a perfect adventure given the conditions.
Mount Margaret is located just over the pass between Keechelus Lake and Rampart Ridge. The normal summer trailhead is located up the steep Forest Road 4832 at about 3500’. Knowing that it had been snowing and cold recently, I was hoping we could make it all the way to the trailhead but was prepared to park the car before then.
As I had feared, we were confronted with some slick ice on the road at around 2900’ along with some compact snow. If I was a more confident winter driver, I might have considered pushing on and trying to make it a bit further up to the trailhead. Instead, it was an easy decision to just pull off at the nearest wide spot in the road and walk up the road to the normal trailhead.
We donned spikes right away to combat the ice on the road and started our way up. We did see some (much more confident) drivers powering their way up to the trailhead, but I was content with our decision.
Before long we reached the trailhead and began our journey up on the normal summer trail. The whole area was under several inches of snow, but enough people had walked in the area that the trail was beaten down.
We worked our way steadily upward, reaching a ridge just above 5000’. At this point we turned to the north and headed out onto the Lake Lillian trail, passing the turnoff to Margaret Lake on our right. We encountered some areas of deeper snow here, but it was all manageable. As we rounded the south peak of Margaret, we located a steep side trail on our right. This path climbs directly up for about 200 feet to a ridge that we used to take us all the way to the summit of Mount Margaret, 4 miles and about 2 hours after we started from our car.
The summit area was small and partially sheltered by trees, but good views abounded on nearly all sides. I loved looking out to the “Granite Kingdom” of Chickamin/Lemah/Chimney Rock as well as the Teanaway and Mt. Stuart. The whole area would probably be covered in significantly more snow in the coming days and weeks. We saw almost no one on our ascent but ended up sharing the summit perch with a few other people. I guess everyone had the same schedule today.
The way down was uneventful and scenic, and soon we were returning to the trailhead to plod down the road to our car, making for a 4-hour roundtrip.
Final Stats: 8.02 miles / 2600 feet of gain
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