Contributed by snowshoe leader Kelly Cleman

The day started out a bit wonky as Sunday traffic up to Swampy Sno-Park was slow-going. But we finally made it to the turnoff only to discover a stuck van parked across the entrance. All eight snowshoers sprang into action with our snow shovels and sand and quickly got the van unstuck! We drove into the parking lot and then discovered that the lot had not been plowed out yet. The snow was pretty deep, so we got to work shoveling out places for the cars to park. With all of that done, we were now ready to go snowshoeing! The goal of this snowshoe trip was to do the Long Loop trail from the Sno-Park, however we quickly discovered that no one had been on the trail yet and there was at least a foot of new snow to plow through. Everyone took a turn as we moved slowly towards the first junction. We discussed if we still wanted to proceed towards the junction with the Long Loop and we decided to keep going that way, breaking through more snow along the way. The new snow was heavy and the leaders felt like they were trying to move through a marshmallow. Needless to say, we didn't move very quickly. We got to the second junction and decided to turn back the way we came. It was easy-going back along the now-broken trail for a while and we got back to the first junction fairly quickly. We noticed that someone had come through after us and turned at that junction to do the Short Loop. So we decided to head that way to make a loop of it. However, we quickly caught up with the group that had been breaking trail coming back our way and so we ended up breaking the rest of the trail back to the trailhead. Everyone took another turn good-naturedly and towards the end, we were rescued by a strong snowshoer from another party that offered to take over the leading duties. We were all happy to have someone else do the work for the last 1/4 mile. We arrived back at the trailhead tired, but with a strong sense of accomplishment for the day.