You might remember that earlier this year I made more than a couple of attempts at doing the Newton Creek – Gnarl Ridge loop on snowshoes and I failed each time. It was a combination of conditions and the fact that, under snow, these routes are not easy to follow. And that’s not even counting with the steep slopes where grip is just an illusion. You can read those posts
here and
here. This time though, Zach, a hike leader of the Portland Hiking Group took a group of us all the way to Lamberson Butte. This covered most of the route I intended in those snowshoe trips with some added destinations and adventure. Perhaps with the new track I got from this hike I might be able to actually do the Newton – Gnarl Loop this coming winter. We’ll see. Anyhow, for this hike, instead of starting from the Nordic Center trailhead, we started from the Umbrella Falls trailhead that is a bit before the Nordic Parking area. This didn’t change things much as shortly after we started our hike, we joined the trail that I’ve done before. It was certainly weird to see the blue diamond markers up in the trees and no snow on the ground. We soon got to Newton Creek, crossed the bridge and climbed to the saddle were the fork with the Gnarl Ridge trail is. At this point, where you would turn left on a snowshoe, we continued straight towards Elk Meadows. I do have a vague recollection of being in this area although some vistas didn’t look familiar to me so I’m not entirely sure. In either case, we circled the southern side of the meadow so all our views included wildflowers, trees and the towering mountain behind everything. As we were coming around, we took a short detour to a shelter in Elk Meadows to rest a bit and take a bite. Despite the cloudy weather, the meadow looked beautiful fully covered with flowers. It’s definitely a spot that would make a nice campsite to stay the night on a multiday trip. Then we got on the Gnarl Ridge trail which has two options. One on the east side closer to the edge and offering views of Newton Creek and the other, on the west side that just climbs thru meadows and views of the Cold Spring Creek valley. The trail follows the creek until it can go around it and circle Lamberson Butte on the right side. The last push of this trail arrives to a saddle that re-opens the view to Newton Creek far down bellow and Mt Hood in front of you. From this point on, the trail continues around the mountain towards Tilly Jane but that’s for a longer trip. Instead, we went a bit of trail climbing south towards the butte where we found a fantastic view point and place for lunch. It was a pity that weather was not cooperating but even like that, views were impressive. After a while and when the air got a bit chili, we started our hike back retracing our steps until we found the fork with a trail that descends on the side on the canyon towards Newton Creek. Zach had commented that getting there and crossing the creek would be one of the challenges of this hike but surprisingly enough, we found a man made bridge right where we needed it. A short climb using some left over ropes placed us back on the Newton trail that started descending progressively towards the Umbrella Falls trail and then to the cars.
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