White River – Boy Scout Ridge, Dec 31st

After many grey days, we finally got an amazing day for New Years Eve. Although a bit colder than usual, we woke up to crisp blue skies and almost no clouds. Luckily, I had picked a snowshoe in one of the most scenic sections of Mount Hood. I rarely take pictures on the way to the trailhead but this day it was worth it. Once we got to White River, we started from an almost desolated trail snowshoeing on the river basin. Instead of taking the normal cutoff trail that goes into the forest and climbs towards Boy Scout Ridge, we continued up as far as you can go which ends on a very steep hill that climbs towards the ridge. Not only the views here were just amazing, but the snow was also fluffy and slippery. That made the climb a bit difficult as we were losing a bit of traction. After a grueling hour or so, we finally made it to the ridge just above tree line. From this vantage point, the white river extends bellow us while we had a clear view of the mountain and Timberline Lodge. At this point we stopped for a lunch break and some snow play. You’ll see in the pictures some of the hikers in the group trying some yoga poses. Then, it was time to get in the woods, so we started snowshoeing south on the ridge. As we continued down, aiming for the Boy Scout Ridge Trail, we were braking new snow and navigating thru the forest. We completed the loop and got back to the White River trail on the cutoff that we didn’t take on the way up and were surprised to see that a lot of people had arrived to white river to play in the snow. Besides being run over by a couple of sleds, it was a very nice winter scene. On our way home, we stopped, as we usually do, to grab something to eat which we thought was a nice closing for the hike and the year but we had just one more surprise. As we drove back to gateway, we had a spectacular sunset. I guess you can say 2010 went out with a bang.



You can check the pictures here

Ghost Ridge and Palmateer Point, Dec 24th

I don’t think I can figure a better way to spend Christmas than doing a backcountry snowshoe route so that’s exactly what we did. I’ve done Ghost Ridge before, both in the summer and the winter. This trip requires a bit of navigation once you veer of the PCT but it’s not difficult to get there. From the other side, I have done Twin Lakes several times and taken the short unmarked trail to Palmateer Point which requires similar navigation skills. For this trip, I decided to combine those two destinations in a single loop which involved finding a way from one end to the other while navigating thru the woods. If that wasn’t fun enough, we had several inches of fresh snow on the ground. So we started from the Barlow Pass trailhead on the PCT heading south. This first part doesn’t offer much as you are just traversing the woods without views as you steadily climb to a saddle. From the saddle is where the fun begins, instead of continuing on the PCT, we followed some old tracks towards Ghost Ridge… Ok, not much navigation there. Even though there’s no trail to Ghost Ridge, a lot of people head that way so finding it is not difficult. Since we had a dense cloud cover, there weren’t any peaks to see. Still we could see, under the clouds, to the far east to the high desert which was quite a treat. From there we continued south for bit and then veered off and started navigating towards Palmateer point. For a while we were steeply descending on deep powder which is always a lot of fun. We continued until we crossed the PCT right at the point where it forks to Twin Lakes choosing a flat spot for lunch. After that, we continued on the Twin Lakes trail for a while but took off from it shortly thereafter. I guess I was further north than expected as we had to descent quite a bit to cross a creek before starting an arduous climb towards Palmateer Point. The climb proved to be more strenuous than expected as we found deeper snow but finally we made it to the clearing. Due to the weather we didn’t get the magnificent view of Mt Hood that you usually get but that doesn’t mean the scenery wasn’t spectacular. By then it was already getting late so instead of tracking back towards the trail, we decided to shoot a straight line to the parking lot. There are not many pictures of this area as we were hiking fast trying to beat the sunset. I guess the only thing we missed was the blue skies!

Wildwood to Pittock Mansion, Dec 19th

About three years ago I took over the leadership of The Portland Hiking Meetup Group as Joe, the founders and organizer, was relocating. Back then it was decided to keep him as a hike leader in the group even though he was not going to be leading hikes. Since he came to visit Portland for the holidays, it was just logic to lead one of the city’s classic hikes with him. So we meet at the Zoo’s parking lot early in the morning to hike via the Wildwood trail all the way to Pittock Mansion. The hike was as expected, a beautiful walk thru Forest Park on muddy trails. Just out of good luck, we had fantastic weather and clear skies so once we got to the mansion, we stayed there for a while enjoying the scenery before heading back down. There’s not much to say about the hike but certainly it was great to get some old friend together with some new group members for this classic hike. It was all fun.