With the seasons changing, it can feel like hiking is behind us for this year, and the sights and wonders of nature are gone as we stay more and more indoors. And while that’s certainly an option, one form of hiking still remains: snowshoeing.

A couple of years ago, I bought my first pair of snowshoes and went up to Artist Point with some friends. It was one of the absolute best hikes of my life. The silence of snow, the beauty of open skies, and the company of friends make for a delightful time in nature.

If you’ve never snowshoed before there are some new skills to learn. You need to know how to climb hills - instead of going straight up, you’ll need to zigzag to have enough traction to get where you’re going.

You’ll need to make sure to check for avalanche warnings, and in general have some sense of how to tell if it’s a danger. WSDOT has a page with some information on Avalanche Control and detection that might be helpful to you: Avalanche Control.

And you’ll need to know that snowshoeing is more taxing physically than hiking, so don’t expect to cover anywhere near the same distance you would in the summer. While I love a good eight plus hour hike normally, snowshoeing I usually keep to just a couple hours.

Artist Point is a great place for your first snowshoeing adventure because it’s so well traveled. There’s so many people there that if anything does go wrong, word can get to someone to help you quickly.

My friends and I snowshoed for a couple of hours before we found an amazing isolated spot just on the other side of a small hill and we decided this was the place to have lunch. We took our snowshoes off and plopped down in our snow gear, ate good trail food, and took in the majestic views. I can still remember the calm that came over me during my time up on Mount Baker. It was incredibly relaxing, nothing could have possibly bothered me in that moment.

After a bit, we put our snowshoes back on and found a different path back to the car. One of the best parts of snowshoeing here was that there weren’t that many trees blocking sight lines. So we could easily maneuver through the hills knowing that our path would safely lead us where we wanted to go while also giving us new views along the way.

As the rain falls on Everett now, it is only a reminder that soon the snowy adventure season will begin. Soon we can strap on our snowshoes and see some of our favorite trails in a whole new light. Soon we can walk on fresh powder hearing that subtle crunch of compacting snow beneath us as we’re surrounded by the quiet and calm that is so perfect and natural in a winter wonderland.

Many of us call our area the Pacific Northwest Wonderland (or #PNWonderland on social media), and there’s something about this time of year that makes that statement so much more true.

If you were planning on putting a winter pause on your hiking, please let me encourage you to get out there and enjoy the new season of joy that is upon us. Get out there and hike!

Artist Point Snowshoe

James works for a local Everett-based company and enjoys board games, hiking, and food. You can find him playing Kubb at a local park or getting lost in the woods.