I was invited for a New Year's Eve snowshoe bp trip in the Lake Tahoe area by a 25 year younger guy who I have done a few trips with. His two roommates could not make it Friday, but made it today. Anyway, I have only been into Echo Lakes once before from Echo Pass area, over Memorial Day weekend, 5 years ago, so could not remember all the roads. Ended up losing the hour that I got when I was asked if I wanted to leave work an hour early. Heck yeah! Finally got started on the right road and trail 5 minutes before 5:00PM. At 6 or so, I took my pack off to change something and checked my thermometer, 7F I think, no more than 9F. No wonder my whiskers were coating up. My hands did good, I had to take my Dachstein gloves off a few times to cool them down. Never found my friend that night. I bped in 3.5 miles looks like at 7500', made camp at 7:30, 15F, eating dinner at 8:30 after melting snow, in bed at 9:40. I was tired, he found me this morning, we had camped a few hundred yards apart he said. Due to the snow overnight when little accumulation was to happen, we hiked out this morning. The Snow Park was not plowed which was my biggest worry. His roommates radioed this morning when we were over half way out. We met them almost at the cars, they asked him if he was going to go back, he may have went part way back to camp with them, but he was tired too. I'll find out later. Must say, it was tough, really tired this AM coming out. I had some tracks going in to follow, but it was still hard. I followed one set of tracks up a hill about 7:00PM, they kept going up, that took it out of me, so I went back down and across Upper Echo lake. I told him next time we go in together. He thought it would be easy for me to follow his tracks, but he went in mid day and other people had made tracks later. Too much worry to know if you are going where someone else went with all the tracks. He said about 5:30PM he shone his light a little for me to see, I told him I was going to start about 5, how far would I have been? Glad to be back home, by the woodstove. Eating ice cream.:)