I went on a meetup snowshoe to Rainbow Lake. It's funny, I thought that because I had done Wedgemount Lake last weekend this would be easy in comparison. Well it was easier for sure, but easy? heck no! I found myself huffing and puffing on the steady uphill (man... I seriously need to get fitter!). I was grateful the leader of the meetup group stayed behind and kept an eye on me. Plus, the strong snowshoers in the front of this group of 11 were doing all the hard work of breaking trail (thank goodness for them, or I would not have made it to the lake)

This snowshoe is 16kms round trip; however, due to a wrong turn at a fork (we unfortunately followed where someone else had broken trail in the wrong direction) near the start it ended up being 18.2kms. When we reached the bridge en route there was a pile of snow, so we went up the creek and crossed.

The key is to look for markers and be very diligent in following them. Having said that, when we got to the meadows there were no markers so we were grateful to have a GPS (wish we'd used the GPS when we had taken a wrong turn earlier in the snowshoe). There was a guy doing a solo snowshoe we ran into on his way back who had lost his way and had decided to turn back.

There was another meetup group on this trail today so in total there were 23 snowshoers (so if it doesn't snow too much in the next day or so for anyone keen to head out there, the trail has been broken and packed down for you all the way to the lake!!)

When we got to the lake, had a real quick lunch (cause it was darn cold) and then zipped back down really fast. We'd started at just before 10am got to the lake around 2.30pm and then back at the car at 5.11pm. So, all in all it was a 7 hour or so day. Really enjoyed the winter wonderland! Beautiful place.