This is the earliest I have gone out on this trail (the Timberline Trail) and there was still tons of snow along the trail. I started at world famous Timberline Lodge and walked down from an elevation of 5,800 feet to 5,000 feet. Above timberline, I could see where I was going and could proceed across large snowfields. The ridges were mainly melted off and the trail was mostly exposed by the time I descended to 5,600 feet. However, when I entered the forest at 5,000 the snow beneath the trees made the trail impasssable and I had to turn around. I tried two different trails at 5,000 feet with the same result. Nice hiking above timberline, though. The trails at 5,000 feet on this side of the mountain (SE) won't be opened for weeks. It will be worse on the west side of the mountain, which gets a lot more snow. Surprising, since we had a lot of warm, dry weather in the spring.

Most of these pictures were taken with the Tamron 24-135mm. I knew it would be windy up there (it almost always is) and I figured I wouldn't want to risk changing lenses. So as much as I wanted to shoot with my new 17-55mm DX Nikkor, I knew I needed more range, hence the Tamron. But I took my 12-24 DX Nikkor "just in case." I'm glad I did. There were two vistas where I absolutely needed it and I just waited patiently for the wind to die down and changed the lenses.