There's a lot more snow out there now -- our tracks from Wednesday were completely obliterated -- and it snowed almost the entire time we hiked. Spent some time wandering around in Shangri La (not intentionally)
I take responsibility for the extra mileage 
and appreciate everyone being good sports. Got back on the "trail" and headed up the Sid Davis drainage -- thanks to our navigator Indie Jack and the snow plow studs who broke trail. It was a near white out at times, all we could see was the lower shoulder of Cornell as we passed by.
Even in Tamarack, I was sinking up to my knees. There was concern that we would hit brush again, so we we made our way up through the forest to the left of Tamarack and did a lot of traversing until we reached the big group of rocks where the main trail starts to head up to the Miller switchback. It was after 1 PM, Krai (one of our snow plow studs) was sinking up to his waist, and most folks were getting pretty cold. We called it a day and followed our track back down. Several other groups followed us up and down and thanked us for breaking trail.
Getting back down was much faster
The cement switchbacks were nice and icy -- I saw several people land on their butts. We headed down on the first available tram (it was after 3 PM) and had a wonderful dinner at Thai Smile in Palm Springs.
I think it's time to try the winter route again...
Miles of smiles,
Ellen
