A break from snowshoeing....

Terah and I decided enough of snowshoes, let's do a regular HIKE!  (Terah just got new boots and was itching to try them out...and I had enough of those shoes strapped to my feet!)  We flip flopped between Little Si (big Si has loads of snow on it still) and Rattlesnake Ledge.  We decided on Rattlesnake as it has more trails if we decided to keep going--we were hoping on just a short, get ourselves back to plain ol' hiking hike and do 5-6 miles.  Rattlesnake is easy to find....exit 32 in North Bend.  Take a right at the end of the ramp and just follow til you see the signs.  (I bike the Iron Horse Trail....right next to it)  It's a VERY busy trail.  We arrived at 9:30AM with maybe a dozen cars in the parking lot already.  Lots of people to the ledge, but if you decided to do the extra 2.4 miles to the East Hill Tower as we did.....very few people go there. (Total round trip today: 9 miles.)  We saw maybe 10 total people on the trip to and from the tower.  Don't expect a large area to look around at the tower...could be that we had so much snow up there.  We just had our boots on for the ledge to tower hike, we recommend some shoe spikes.  Snowshoes would be fine too, but maybe a little overkill.  About .5 miles up from the ledge you start hitting snow. It was so cold up there we just walked on the crusty ice...just don't go too far off the trail or you will fall in up to your knees.  Had a quick lunch at the tower and turned back around--wind was whipping.  Ran into our fellow triple H, Monika, at the ledge on the way down and had a quick return to the lake.  Would be nicer on a clear, sunny day...but what trail doesn't improve with those........