With a bright sunny day ahead, Mary Ann joined me Monday for a trek out towards Lost Lake. I've been wanting to do this all winter and with the road soon to be plowed this might've been the last sunny day to have a shot at it. All the info I could get was that the road was clear through at least the Lolo Pass Rd intersection which is about 6 miles from the lake. We actually made it almost another mile to the forest service boundary before snow blocked the road at the "trailhead"..
Higher clearance could've made it around one more bend but it wasn't worth the effort in my little Honda. From here it was a little over four miles of steady uphill and then about a mile down to the lake. After about the first mile almost all other tracks disappeared except from a couple snowmobiles. With bright warm, soon to be hot, sun and a cool breeze we made it to the tollbooth in a little over two hours. Hah! We saved $5 today!
Down the last hill and around the corner to the General Store / Lodge that normally by this time would be open selling groceries and renting boats ,rooms and cabins. Not today...
And from the side... Keep in mind this is only at 3,150' elevation.
For a better perspective of the snow depth, I'm sure most of you have seen a campground toilet building...
The plan was to hang out for a couple hours and get mountain pictures later in the afternoon without the bright sunglare. But with all the snow it was tough to find a spot to sit, everything is buried right down to the lakeshore. About the only spot was the little wooden footbridge by the dam. the one right across from the boatdock. Where normally people would be renting boats on a sunny day in May like this one. Uh... Not today..
We did get to sit right next to the one little clear spot on the lake which gave this nice refelection..
After a leisurely lunch and about an hour of just lounging in the summer feeling sunshine we made the return trek back to the upper lot viewpoint for a last look at the main view we came to see..
We never saw or heard another soul the entire day. A handfull of butterflies, a bunch of birds and a couple hungry chipmunks at the lake and that's about it. Long periods of just complete silence with the lake under a coat of white and no other people within miles. What an incredible spring day!!
The rest of the pictures are at http://picasaweb.google.com/pdxgene/LostLakeSnowshoe
One last look at Mt Hood before we left for the trek , thankfully mostly downhill, back to the car..  | 
