Craters of the Moon is a great place to begin snowshoeing. Its wide open relatively flat and a variety of scenery. All trips begin at the visitors center which remains open during the winter. The staff there are wonderful a great help with information about the area. During the winter months they also maintain x-country ski trails along the roads. Traditional and skating tracks along with an area that can be used by snowshoers and walkers. The one time I have been there the track was firm enough in the morning you could hike along the road in boots. My first winter trip to Craters was on February 6th 2012. It had been a winter with low snow accumulations it seemed like all over Idaho and I had not
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been on snowshoes yet that season. But there had been a bit of fresh snow falling and the Craters of the Moon web cam showed snow on the ground so I went. Checked in at the visitors center the day before I hit the trails so I could get an early start before it warmed up and softened the snow to much. Stayed the night in Arco. Hit the trail about 7 in the morning walked about a mile and could not remember if I had locked the Jeeps’ doors. I had a laptop and some camera equipment in it. I dumped the sled and snowshoed back to the Jeep, I had not locked it so it was a “worthwhile” trip. Got back on the track picked up the sled and continued on. I eventually went to Devil’s Orchard and camped the night. Total distance was only 2 miles which gave me time to wander around and take photos. The temperatures weren’t forecasted to be to bad so I tried and experiment in trying to lighten my sled. I took my summer tent instead of my heavy 4 season Northface VE-24. Not a good choice. Although my bag was plenty warm, the tent was not as comfortable as when I’ve use the VE-24. More lessons learned. Because I had saved so much weight by not bringing the VE24 I packed in 3 cameras and an assortment of lenses. My tried and true Olympus E-30 with 12-60mm lens. I was trying out a new Olympus Pen E-PL2 with 14-22mm and last but not least I brought a new acquired OM-4t and a couple of lenses. Went retro and brought a 35mm SLR. The OM-4t has one of the most advanced metering systems of any 35mm camera and I wanted to test it out. Craters of the Moon in the winter I thought would be a great place to test it out. Trying to expose a photograph properly with large areas of white and black I felt would be a great test. It passed, took multiple spot meter readings from the snow, rock and sky and it exposed the film spot on. After scanning in the slides into the computer I was even able to create a panoramic shot from 3 images. Best of both worlds film and digital.

Had ZBS foundation radio drama on the iPod for the walk in, during the night and out . Dreams of Rio. If you haven’t heard any of the ZBS foundations work you should check it out. They do a lot of on site recording for background color and they certainly succeeded on the production. The recording is to realistic that more than a few times I had to check out behind me to see who was talking only to realize it was the iPod. Especially disconcerting when you know there is no one around for miles.

When I asked one of the rangers out skiing the trails how the snow compared to usual he said it was a lot less than normal. Can’t wait to see the normal. Definitely will go back.