Mt. Teneriffe

Left Seattle at 9am and arrived at Mt. Teneriffe parking lot just before 10am.  The parking lot was almost overflowing as per usual.  The sky was overcast and continued to stay that way all day. Started hiking at about 10:30am. We took the Mt. Teneriffe Road Trail on the way up and after about 2.5 miles, started hitting a little snow on the ground. Shortly after the snow got very deep and it started snowing pretty hard as well. Trudging through the snow with just boots is possible but difficult, and you will want yours to be very waterproof.  We had snowshoes which were extremely helpful; as it was our feet still got a little cold and wet.  About a mile from the summit the snow becomes thinner and harder packed in the trees.  Snowshoes are fine for this part especially if you have heel lifts, microspikes would also work well.  We saw several folks going the opposite direction, but it did not take very long for the snow to cover their tracks. At the summit it was almost a whiteout, so we spent little time there before taking the Kamikaze Falls trail on the way down.  The snow was much thinner on this trial and did not extend as far down in elevation.  Snowshoes were not very useful, but microspikes and trekking poles were especially due to the steepness going down.  We arrived at the parking lot at about 4:30 and took 2 hours to get back to Seattle as they were closing down I-90 for night construction (beware of that). Next time we will definitely take Kamikaze Falls on the way up and the Road Trail on the way down.  

Recommended Gear for this time of year:

- Light outer shell (waterproof for weather)

- Trekking Poles

- microspikes

- snowshoes

- waterproof boots

- gators

- GPS and map (just a smart phone and map app is suitable)