Ghost Ridge out and back, Dec 18th

After two very low snow years we finally got a break. Early in December we were hit by several winter storms that dumped a lot of snow up in the mountain. Before the holidays the snow pack was already at 140% of normal. The bad side of this is we had a couple of weeks were we had to stay home as you couldn’t go anywhere. Well, that’s not entirely true. We could snowshoe around the house. Finally, we saw a window in the weather so Val and I, instead of doing our classic White River outing for our first snowshoe of the year, we opted for Ghost Ridge. On one side, we didn’t want to deal with lots of people and on the other, we wanted some fresh powder so we picked one of my favorite routes. Getting there wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be. WE were pleasantly surprised to find the parking area almost empty. The mountain to ourselves. After gearing up and bundling up (it was crisp and very cold) we started our march on the PCT. It was like a dream. Fresh, deep snow everywhere. Even the tracks were soft. We noticed tracks once we veered of trail towards the ridge and decided to follow those. Once we got to the opening the views expanded to Mt Hood on the back and all the way down the valley to he west. It was hard to say how far we could see. As we continued up the ridge, we saw a couple with a dog sitting and enjoying he views. Right after that, we took a detour following other tracks to a view point where we found a backpack that was recently left there but nobody with it. Kind of strange but didn’t make much of it. Once we got back to the viewpoint were the couple was sitting, we noticed there were no tracks going forward. It was time for us to break new trail. The going got a bit slower but the mountain was ours. Each step made the views even better until we got to the top. WE continued for a bit on the ridge to an opening that hadn’t been stepped on and stopped to enjoy some soup, the silence and the views. We did consider continuing back down for the longer lop but knew that, with this much snow, we could that at some other time so we opted for returning the way we came. If this stays like it is, is going to be a great snowshoeing year!

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