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!