Snowshoeing!

Last weekend I got my first ever taste of the strange and wonderful sport of snowshoeing. Courtney and I and a couple friends went on a guided hike through the Mount St. Helens wilderness on the way to a couple gorgeous views of the mountain and eventually to June Lake and the 74-foot waterfall that feeds it.

A couple of things about snowshoeing before I show the photos:

1. Snowshoes are not hard to walk in. They are long, wide, and flat, but in the snow they are the best for walking on lots of feet of snow. It feels like walking with your normal shoes. And there's quite a bit of agility when climbing or descending hills. 
2. In the mountains, we encountered something called "the inversion," which means it was warmer while hiking in the snow than it was in the Portland parking lot where we met our guide in the morning. In other words, while my friends in Portland were huddled under blankets and drinking tea in the fog, I was in my T-shirt snapping photos of a partially frozen lake while standing on who knows how many feet of snow. Breezes were as warm as summer. Wild, huh?
3. We had great snowshoeing conditions. Not much slippery ice as we may have expected, and a lot of the snow had been packed down by hikers before us making the trail easy to follow. Plus skies were as clear as could be.
4. Thanks to the high reflectivity of snow, photos were hard to come by. June Lake is tucked into the rocks just out of view of Mount St. Helens, and June Lake Falls was completely shaded when we stopped there for lunch. The contrast between the shade and direct sunshine on the snow is my excuse for not getting great shots. Compounding all this was my surprise at there being a waterfall at all - I hadn't come prepared with a tripod. 
5. But who cares about the lack of great shots? It was a blast!

So I hope you don't mind the double post day and enjoy double the photos for one day:

Courtney and I with Mount St. Helens behind us

Mount St. Helens view. If we kept going on the June Lake trail, eventually we'd make it to the top of the mountain. In fact, in the parking lot we met someone who had hiked that morning to the top of the mountain and skied down.

More Mount St. Helens. It's mountains.

On the trail to June Lake

Courtney's having fun

The shoes were easy to use, but only once we figured out how to put them on. We all needed some amount of help. That's our friend Rebecca in the front not needing any help.

June Lake and June Lake Falls. I didn't dare walk on the ice, though judging by those footprints there are those who did

Our group sits down for lunch. Now that I look, I guess I was the only one actually wearing nothing over my T-shirt. You can also see my shadow in this one.

A little bit of waterfall reflection. This is as close as I managed to get to the lake.

Our group eating lunch by the lake. From left to right: Rebecca, Emma, and Courtney.