Table Mountain, Dec 28th

When in December can you do a hike like Table Mountain? For those in Oregon or Washington, the response would be rather easy. Not very often. Table Mountain usually gets covered in snow or ice early in the season making it a bit treacherous to get up there. This year with the record low level of snow we’ve had, things changed a bit. Certainly we saw some ice on the trees but none on the ground which made this hike feel like it would early in the spring or late in the fall. We started on a nice, blue sky day that turned way to fast to overcast. Even before we got to the fork on the trail where the real climb started on the Heart Break trail we could see the fog coming thru the trees. The hike up was the normal march over the endless switchbacks. The first viewpoint, where you’re always welcomed with amazing views of the Gorge and Mt Hood, was so covered in clouds that it was almost depressing. We still decided to continue up only to find the rock pile equally covered. By then we were thinking that staying up at the top of Table mountain was not going to be long and the chances of good pictures was going to be very limited. Luckily we were very wrong. Just below the top we walked out of the clouds into blue skies. Towards the north and east there was a partial cloud cover so part of the forest was visible. In the distance we could clearly make Mt Adams and Mt Rainier. Looking south was a bit different. We were on top of the clouds, at cloud level. It was certainly breathtaking to see the clouds come in towards the ridge and turn around without being able to pass. It almost looked like the clouds could reach the summit we were on. We reached the viewpoint where we did the normal stop for lunch while enjoying he views. From there we crossed to the back side of Table were we got a glimpse of St Helens. On that side we found a bit of ice on the trees. Then we started walking towards the clouds and as soon as we started climbing down we came back to the gray overcast day we had left behind hours before when we started



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