Lake Vernon cross-country

At the end of each ramp, we would find a short route down to the next ledge, which would lead back away from the Manzanita toward the creek….and we did this four or five times. At that point, we were almost at the end of the steepest granite, and all the way over to the right by the Manzanita. That's where she is in the photo at left. Once on the next ledge down, we walked back towards the creek again.

And it was a fairly large ledge. But this was the hardest part. We worked our way back along this ledge toward the creek, and saw two or three short but difficult stretches that might get us to the next ledge. We finally picked one and down-climbed a Class III set of boulders to get to an even larger ledge below. We only attempted this little climb because we could see that it was the last ledge before the more gradual granite of the lower slopes.

At this point, things got a lot easier. The granite isn’t as steep, and we worked our way both down and back to the left, to get closer to the creek. Once we could see the creek, we stayed above it on a series of granite ramps that led right down into the woods. This part was quite easy.

You can get a sense of the topography from the photo on the right. The creek is down in the canyon, and you can see the ledges we navigated on the slopes here on the left. At this point we were pretty far from the creek.

Walking along the ledges wasn't too bad--the key to the route is finding good places to negotiate the drop from one ledge to the next. And we were able to find places where that was not too hard.

Once you are down, the use trail to the Snow Survey cabin starts and stays right up against the granite, and follows it southwest on the edge of the forest. Once you find the cabin, it’s a clear trail to the lake. That's the snow survey cabin below.