Snow! Finally! After a long wait, we finally got some new snow on the ground and the slight promise of good snowshoeing. Val and I had been waiting for this since the beginning of winter and to this date; we had tried once before, but with the lack of snow, that attempt ended up being a hike. So with our hopes high, we headed up to Mt Hood to try Gumjuwac Saddle, a route we had never tried before. Even though you can make this route much longer by going either to Lookout Mountain or to Barged Lake, we decided to just get to the saddle as I needed to get back home and get ready to get on a plane to Costa Rica. While driving there, we noticed that there wasn’t a lot of snow so, instead of putting or snowshoes on at the trailhead, we started with them attached to our packs. Soon after we started ascending though, we started potholing… yes; the snow was deep enough for us to actually use the snowshoes! So we shoed up, and started going up. The first part was completely forested with very little views of Mt hood across the highway. As we gained elevation, the snow actually got a lot better. We were breaking trail on fluffy powder. It was perfect. At some point I think I lost the trail so we navigated a bit and did a very steep section going up with snow up to our knees. The reward was an open view of Mt Hood and Mt Jefferson in the distance. Further up it was a winter wonderland. It certainly accounted for all the snowshoeing we hadn’t done this year. Up at the saddle with no views, we stopped for a quick lunch and then we headed down making a second stop to once again get the full view of Mt Hood and some crazy clouds going over it. Certainly not enough snowshoeing for a year, but at least we got to do a descent route.
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