Ghost Ridge – Palmateer Point – Devil’s Half Acre, May 1st

There’s that saying April showers bring May Flowers but here in Oregon it seems winter doesn’t want to go away this year. Earlier in the season we didn’t have a lot of snow at low elevation but now, we have a lot, and at much lower elevations that usual. So instead of trying to find a nice place to go hiking, I opted for grabbing my snowshoes one more time and head up to the mountains. The decision also took into account the forecast that was looking really promising for the weekend. As always, when I think snowshoes, I also think Barlow Pass as all the trails in that area are just fantastic with possibilities of great views. From those I picked something I did not so long ago (although I didn’t get the views back then). I combined Ghost Ridge with Palmateer point, but to make it a bit longer and even more interesting, I added Devil’s Half Acre. Ghost Ridge and Palmateer Point are two, non-official names, for the top of two ridges in the Barlow Creek Area. Combining these two means going off trail and navigating thru the woods. Getting to Devil’s Half Acre is not much different although, instead of going uphill, you just go down to a Meadow and hope not to get in the water. So we started on a bright and sunny Sunday morning from a completely empty parking lot and headed towards the PCT. This first section is actually really easy to follow as the PCT is very well marked and a lot of people do this route to Twin Lakes. As soon as we got to a Saddle where the trail veers off south, we turned slight left and headed uphill. From here the slope got a bit tougher as it’s steeper and there were no tracks to follow. Following the ridgeline, we passed a couple of clearings that gave us partial views of Mt Hood behind us. Then after turning one last tree we came up to our first destination, Ghost Ridge. At this point, not only you get a first grade view of Mt Hood but you can also see all the way to Jefferson and beyond.



From that point we were able to make also our next destination across the valley. Instead of turning there, we continued on the ridge down to a saddle and veered east on a shallow canyon that soon met back with the PCT. By then it was almost time for lunch so we explored a bit until we found a nice spot for lunch. We then continued east towards the south end of the ridge where Palmateer point is. That made us pass by a meadow and a lot of snowmelt but soon we were back on dryer ground. Finally on the ridge, we turned left again and headed straight uphill towards blue ski. As soon as we came out of the trees we felt the snow giving away under us. It was not enough to be a concern but quiet eerie when you step on it and see little cracks form all around you. We did a couple of switch backs to ease the uphill and finally made it to our second destination.



Last time I tried this, I made a straight line from Palmateer Point back to the parking lot at Barlow Pass which ended up being long and very uninteresting. This time, I wanted to explore Devil’s Half Acre Meadow. Today there’s summer campground in the area but this place used to be the pioneers route to the west. I read somewhere that the name comes from the weird weather you can get there because of its geographic location. To get there, we started on a steep and fun downhill that went from an open slope to a lush green forest. On our way we found several soft spots where loosing traction or even post holing was very easy, in fact, Heye entertained us by doing a full face plant as he was coming down. The part I was not expecting was finding the meadow with a lot of snowmelt and standing water. In the map you’ll notice a sharp turn right from that spot that we had to take to gain a bit of elevation on the other side of the road to get away from the water. We followed the contour of the slope for a while until we reached the open area of the campground. It was nothing spectacular so we just crossed the area and continued on the road back towards Barlow Pass to complete the loop



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