Snowshoeing at Buzzard Point, March 8th

Oops, I forgot about this one. Yes, up to this point, my posts have been in order but for whatever reason, I missed or forgot about Buzzard Point. This was a shorter and kind of discovery trail we did that starts at the end of the parking lot in Barlow Pass Sno Park. The hike itself is not that difficult as it goes downhill on a road which is very wide. What made it somewhat harder was all the fresh snow and the constantly changing weather. You’ll see in the pictures that we had blue ski and sun and then some snow showers. What made this hike shorter than planned (besides Chris leading us of track) and a bit more “emotional” was that we lost a dog. Rip, a new member of the group had his dog with him. At some point, Rip was falling a little behind while the dog was running up and down in front of us. At some point, he decided to head back to the car but when he started looking for his dog it was not there. Of course this story has a happy ending. A bit after lunch, when we were heading back, we heard the dog barking somewhere in the tress and started calling it until he showed up and came running to us. After that, we took kind of a short cut to the highway and back to the cars to reunite the dog with Rip. Happy ending.

Snowshoeing at Bennet Pass, March 21st

For this weekend I was kind of tired of work so I was not sure if I wanted to lead a hike or not. Being stronger than me, I ended up posting a hard, long snowshoe for the day in the Bennet pass area in Mt Hood. For this particular event, only Madhu and Carol joined me which made the hike a lot more fun. To top that, weather forecast was a complete mix so we didn’t know what to expect. After our nice drive to the mountain, we started our hike with a very cloudy, grey day that soon afterward cleared up. The first portion of the trail was a wide open road surrounded by trees on both sides. We did notice that with the high temperatures of the previous days, snow had melted a bit forming what is known as the West Coast Concrete. Basically the snow gets so packed and heavy that it feels like walking on peanut butter. Not only you sink into it but you have to lift some of the snow to move your feet. Yes, it’s a workout. In fact, the original plan was to do 11 miles and we ended up doing just 7. After walking for a while on the road, we got a clearing with open views to the valley were Tea Cup lake is. As you’ll see in the pictures, views were amazing even though clouds were covering Mt Hood. From that point on, the trail narrowed and started a really steep ascent towards what is known as the Terrible Traverse. This portion of the trail, which in the summer is just a road (believe it or not), gets all the snow drift from the mountain. This creates a steep slope that continues down for hundreds of feet. When avalanche conditions are high, it’s wise to avoid this trail. After passing the first portion of the traverse where we had to climb up and down over slopes and big snow banks, we got to the really hard part. At that point you find yourself walking on the side of the mountain almost wishing you don’t slide as it would take a long while until you reached the bottom. The rewards of doing this is the amazing views you get from the turn out. Shortly after passing the traverse, weather started turning on us so we had to cut the snowshoe short and return.

Lisa’s Birthday at Rockaway Beach, Mar 14th

I guess the title says it all. Being Lisa’s birthday, I planned a surprise party/stay at the beach for the whole weekend. After the long planning process, we headed to Rockaway Beach in the Oregon Coast on Friday 13th. The house I found was very nice with enough room for 15 people. Best of all, it was in front of the beach with an incredible view of a couple of rocks out at sea. As the night got closer on Friday, the rest of the group started to show up so we spent the rest of the night just fooling around. On Saturday, after a very nice breakfast that Christine made for all of us, we went for a walk on the beach. As you’ll see in the pictures, it was rainy and windy the whole time. Once we got tired of getting drenched, we walked back in to the main road in Rockaway to walk back to the house not without stopping at a couple of antique stores, joking around a bit and finding Zoltar!! Yes, we did make the wish to be big, but we didn’t get it, I guess we forgot to unplug the machine. Later that day we just enjoyed some board games, old movies and a nice BBQ. Sunday weather was no different, so after breakfast, we cleaned the house and left.

Carry your own meat hike, March 1st

In most of the hiking group day hikes, we end up going to a bar or restaurant after the hike to enjoy some well earned food and drinks. With this in mind, I thought why not make it even more rewarding by actually carrying what we were going to eat, so I arranged with Lisa to do a BBQ up at Nesika. After making sure there was a grill at the lodge and that Lisa was going to be there for the weekend, I planned this hike where all were requested to carry whatever they wanted to grill up at the lodge. This was even more rewarding as the trails club allowed us to take our dogs for this particular event. We started on a rainy Sunday morning from the Multnomah Falls lodge up the trail. After the first part of the ascent, where you turn up to continue on the Multnomah basin and get out of the paved portion, the trail turned into mud. Further up, we saw a lot of blow down, debris and snow on the trail which made this a bit more difficult than usual. Right before getting to the forest road that goes to the lodge’s parking lot we found a “trail marker” that Lisa left for us the night before. You’ll see her artistic abilities in the pictures. Once at the lodge, we met up with Lisa and Aaron who had the BBQ already going as well as the fireplace inside the lodge. Being a rainy and cold day, that was very well welcomed. The BBQ was great and everybody did their share. After a short rest and warming up session in front of the fireplace, we started our hike back to the cars enjoying the waterfalls with all the extra water from the rain. After that fun hike, instead of going to a bar or restaurant, we went for ice cream!

Snowshoeing at Mineral Jane, Feb 28th

You can’t say I didn’t warn you that I was going to be in this area again. Contrary to normal behavior, this trip was a last minute decision so I went out with Sara and Charlie, her mini mutt. The first part of the trail was the same I did a couple of weeks back when I took a group to Barlow Ridge. Contrary to that trip, this time, once we got to the T intersection, we took the other direction staying on the Mineral Jane going towards White River. If Barlow Ridge was amazing, this side actually took the frosting (it actually looked like frosting for the most part). The whole trail was constantly changing from being surrounded by tall trees to small open areas with clear views of Mt Hood. As you will see in the pictures, weather did not cooperated that much but still the views where really great. The last portion of the trail was really interesting as we where bordering a creek that has a lot of fallen trees that you can see by the snow that crosses from one side to the other. Since we didn’t have a destination planned, at some point we decided to stop for lunch in an open area where we had some really nice sandwiches while taking on the views. I don’t recall the sandwiches as much as Sara laughing at me when some snow fell from a tree and hit me on the head while eating. After recovering from that, we headed back on the same trail, which seemed to go up hill all the time, just in time to avoid the rain.