With a good forecast for Friday and Saturday on the east side, Pat and I decided to go for Eightmile Mountain. It was a beautiful day for the hike in and put on snowshoes just as we hit the trail. They came in good use nearly the entire part of the trip. We got a late start, but the hike in to Eightmile Lake with our overnight gear didn't seem to bad. We set up camp as we arrived at the lake in a wind protected area. It was around 6pm by the time we had arrived and had just enough time to set up camp and make dinner before it got to dark.
The next morning we got moving by 6am and made our way along the north side of the lake. Just at the end of the lake we headed up the drainage that meets up with the East face route. I was looking forward to all the snow cover for this trip. The snowshoes came in handy on the way up, and as we gained elevation we encountered a lot of wind blown snow on the upper east face which made for painfully slow conditions. At certain points we were kicking ourselves a knee to thigh high trench up the route. Happy to be at the notch that gained the ridge we took a short break and continued on to the summit. I always love seeing all the snow stuck to the mountains in early spring.
We decided to check out the South Face route for the decent and in doing so we relived to have much better snow conditions and just an easier route in general. We saw one mountain goat up very high as we were making our way off the mountain. It wasn't to long until we were back at camp packing up and heading back to the car. Great way to knock off a T200 early in the year.
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