Gold Creek Pond Snowshoeing

This photo was a little blurry, but it's the only one with me in it so I included it.

I really enjoy taking photos, so I made everyone stop a few times for group shots along the trail. I believe this was just after we started heading around the "pond"--which seemed much more of a lake than a pond.

The lake was surrounded by beautiful snow-covered hills, and the views were amazing. The sky was clouded, but the clouds were far enough up that we could see the tops of the hills and that made it pretty neat.

This was one of my favorite scenes, the dark of the lake and the contrast of the snow is beautiful.

This was one of the several snow-covered bridges that crossed creeks flowing in or out of the lake.

I like the little spot of color in the black and white of the winter scene.

There are a few permanent residences around the lake, and I guess these people have to snowshoe, ski or snowmobile in. That would be an interesting lifestyle... kinda cool, but it could get old? Pretty neat scenery, though!

There were two ladies who we passed on the trail here who were sitting down in different places along the hike. They brought a sleeping pad to sit on and I guess just enjoyed the scenery and the conversation at different points. I thought it was kinda strange and funny at the time, but it seems kinda neat to me as I think about it. It's a pretty short trail, so you could just go and have lunch and sit and talk and hang out with amazing scenery to look at.

This was a coniferous tree whose needles had turned red and started to fall. I don't know if that's normal for that type of tree or if it was somehow diseased or something, but someone on the trip seemed to have heard of that before. I should know, but I don't.

All the girls on the trip were very well travelled and had some good conversations about the places they had all been to.

When we had almost gone all the way around the lake we saw this snow cave that someone had built and here Eileen was checking it out.

This was the view across the lake looking toward the surrounding hills. Pretty huge open landscape.

Kara taking her turn in the snow cave.

This one was kind of blurry but I liked the composition and you could see the residence we passed if you look closely.

This was another bridge over the creek made of a culvert and covered with tons of snow.

This was the snow covered summertime parking lot right near the lake. I suppose we hiked in on the road leading up to this before starting around the lake.

Most of the time it was cloudy and overcast but toward the end the sun started coming out. Here it had just started shining on this hill across the way. It made it really shimmer.

On our way back Eileen and Cara went back to the car because Cara wasn't feeling super great, and Julie, Kara and I explored off trail a little bit. It was fun to actually use our snowshoes in the nice deep snow. I'm not sure what was under this snowy shape, but it looked kinda neat.

I'm not sure what happened with these next couple of photos, 'cause the whole scene is hazy--the lens must have gotten fogged up. But the sky in this photo really looked like that. We were almost back to the car and it was getting pretty dramatic. I took quite a few photos of the hills with this increasingly interesting sky.

Kara and Julie decided to make snow angels. They turned out pretty well. :)

This was the view across the highway of one of the ski areas... Snoqualmie? I'm not really familiar with the ski places in the area, since I've never been.

This was the road where we parked. When we got there earlier it was totally packed. I guess we were some of the last to leave.

The blue sky started showing through the clouds toward the end.

Just ninety degrees to the left of that last photo, the sky looked like this. Both beautiful sights in their own ways. I thought this shot was very dramatic.