Re: Snow Mountain Pictures

Snow Mountain's namesake wilderness area is a relatively small (35K acres or so) wilderness area in the Mendocino National Forest, roughly east of Maxwell. The area has no real lakes - there's one pond which even now has relatively stagnant water. There are streams and springs, as we all know these go by the wayside as the year progresses. So I've wanted to do this as an early season trip, either May in a drought year or June in a normal year.

One point...the trails on the USGS maps are way out of date, the ones on the USFS' Snow Mountain Wilderness map are different, and correct. The Snow Mountain Hiking Association has downloadable PDFs of maps with updated trail locations, as well as flow information for springs from late August 2008, a relatively dry year. One suspects this year will be worse, not only because its dryer, but also because it's the third in a sequence of dry years. Definitely download their PDFs if you're thinking of going.

Cedar Pond, along the way...



Sacramento Valley, and Sutter Buttes, from Snow Mountain East (the higher of the two):



Coast Range View:



Mt. Lassen (dead center, far background) from Snow Mountain. I could also see Shasta, but it was too far away for a good picture.



Snow Mountain East



Snow Mountain West



Letts Lake and Valley

Excellent! WE've been meaning to get up there, but somehow the Sierra keeps pulling us away....

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Looks like some nice red firs? A few weeks ago bought the Mendocino NF map and looked at some topos for that area thinking about a visit. Month ago had been on the other side of the valley at Table Mountain Ecological Reserve just after a cold storm put over a foot of snow on that mountain with nice clear air over the valley. In image below at the end of the small stream canyon, beyond in the distance is a piece of the valley floor with the Coast Range rising up in the scattered blue light beyond. Between the second and third trees on the near skyline is a barely visibly white on this downsized web image, Snow Mountain.

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2014 03:38PM by DavidSenesac.

Yep. There were cedars near...cedar pond as well, behind me as I took the photo. Ponderosa Pine nearer the trailhead. There were a lot of serpentinite rock outcrops in the area.

Those coastal mountains make a nice sight from the east side - I could pick out Snow Mountain, the Yolla Bollys, and the Trinities from CA-36 coming down from Lassen in March, with the pathetic snow year they were about all that was showing white.