If you have read my posts, you’ll probably notice this is not the first time I’m writing about Barlow Ridge. I guess this has become one of my favorite places to go snowshoeing as it offers a bit of everything. From the parking lot, you get a nice downhill to begin with before you get deeper into the forest, but just as you think you’re not going to get a lot of views, you get to the Mineral Jane and eventually to the Barlow Ridge road. From this point, the trail is a steady uphill with multiple views of the white river basin and Mt Hood on clear days. From this road, you can return at any time, but what I’ve found to be more interesting is to go all the way until it forks with the lower branch going to Teacup Lake while the other, less visited road, continues up. Somewhere along this road, you can veer off for some backcountry traveling and here is where you can find peace, solitude and deep snow. On this trip I retraced pretty much what I did last time so eventually we got back to the same viewpoint above the trees. Now that I’m getting my bearings right in this area (this time I did the hike without even looking at the map), I know that the peak in front of the viewpoint is Barlow Butte. Maybe next year I will be able to do the loop as I want to do it which basically includes getting to this viewpoint to then traverse to the rock formation south of the butte and continue to the Butte. From there, instead of going down to the road, I imagine you can do a straight line back to the parking lot. We’ll see how it goes next year.
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