There was plenty of new snow at Snowbasin, more than 2 feet at the parking lots. A parking attendant told us there were no places left in any of the parking areas, so we parked along the road below the lower parking lot. Being the first heavy snow fall this year, a lot of people showed up. We decided to walk over through the Maples Picnic Area to the north. This year they hadn't even groomed the trails yet. When we got into the Maples, we decided to hike on up to the the saddle ridge just below the Ogden Overlook and Sardine Peak. Earlier that morning someone had broken a trail along the summer trail. Usually in winter they go up the powerline trail, which is really steep. It's a little longer on the summer trail, but not as steep. When we got up on the ridge, I wanted to go on up to the overlook. I don't think Cheryl really wanted to go on, but she did it for me. When we got up there, it was 4:00 in the afternoon, and the sky was clouding up, getting cold and dark.

Coming down we cut straight down through the woods as I have other years, but the snow was too deep, too soft, and also too wet. It was very hard going and we sank up past our knees. We couldn't go back up to the trail, so had to continue on down. When we got to where the trail doubled back, we decided to stay on it for the rest of the way, even through it would have been much shorter going straight down. We still made pretty good time though, two hours going down compared to the four hours it took going up. Because we started this hike so late in the day, we didn't get back to the car until 6:00 and it was getting dark. Our car was the only one left. We went into the lodge to get something to eat, but they had stopped serving at 5:00 PM, so we headed home.

The total hike was about 4.5 miles, climbing about a thousand feet high. I didn't have my GPS this time.