Twin Lakes in Snow

Lower Twin Lake

If you want to go play in the snow on Mount Hood on a sunny Sunday, you had best get yourself up early and get out the door, because lots of other people have the same idea and the parking at the Trail Head is limited. And it doesn't matter much with trail head you are targeting.

My Partner and I wanted to visit a trail that she had done with her BFF last fall (before the snow). Last week there was like 2 feet of new snow up in that pass, so we expected things to be different. Our plan is to park at the Frog's Lake Sno-Park (don't know why they spell it that way) and then snow shoe (or hike) the 2.5 miles over the pass to the first of the twin lakes (let's call it lake 1)(Ok, it is really called Lower Twin Lake)(The other one is lake 1). 

A View from the Car

The main road (well...... only road) from Portland up to the Government Camp area, where most of the snow parks and ski areas are, is US 26. We got out of our house by 8:00, but didn't really get through the city and going up 26 until around 9:00. We stopped in Sandy to get a Joe's Donut (yum) and were going great until just around the Zig Zag ranger station. Then we were slow bumper to bumper until the steep uphill road changed to 2 uphill lanes. There was snow and ice in the passing lane, so people who tried that gave up pretty quickly, but still the traffic was moving nice up into Government Camp. At this point, just about everybody veered off to either visit ski bowl or head further up the mountain to ski at Timberline. We were one of very few cars to continue on down US26. Just 7 miles past Government Camp, on the way to Madras and Central Oregon, is the little turn-off for Frog Lake Sno-Park. The parking lot is right off the road and is just a bit of cleared and plowed space big enough for perhaps 50 cars. There are a couple of pit toilets there (which were very popular). When we arrived the parking lot was less than half full. We were a little surprised at that and so were the other snowshoers that we talked to.

Snowshoers. What a funny word. I feel uneasy using terms like "Go Snowshoeing" or "Go for a Snowshoe". They just don't sound right. They sound like made up words. But my spell checker seems to be happy with them so perhaps I should just let it be. 

When we were in Sunriver a couple of weeks ago, my partner and I both got blisters on our feet from walking in Snowshoes. We found it is often possible to walk on previously trod snow trails with our Boots (and wearing snow cleats). Walking is much easier than snowshoeing and avoids those blisters. 

Today we decided to start out just wearing our snow cleats but carry our snowshoes with us in case we needed them. 

This is how you take a picture

When I was buying Snowshoes, I was under the impression that I needed to get snowshoes that were big enough to support my weight. I also didn't want to buy the really expensive REI ones because we just don't go out in the snow all that often. So I got a couple of pairs of the ones that they have seasonally at Costco. These cost like $65 and the XL ones claim that they can support a weight of 250 pounds. When you talk about the weight limits of Snowshoes you are discussing how much "flotation" they have. I guess they are trying to float you up on top of that slightly compressed snow.  It can be pretty neat to walk around in big snowshoes like that. You really can walk across the top of deep snow only sinking down a few inches, instead of post-holing down to your thighs, which is what you would do if you only had hiking boots on. 

The Snow is all Glisteny

What a great smile

Lots of Snow Downed Trees

We started up the trail and had no problem at all in our snow cleats. The cleats are like snow-cable-chains for your shows. They are connected with rubber so they stretch over your boots and give you excellent traction on ice and compressed slippery snow. We found that we could walk easily down the compressed snow path and we didn't post-hole unless we wandered out of the middle of the track. Post Hole. Another funny word. It is what happens when you wander off the trail and break through the snow crust and sink up to you knee ( or thigh) in the white stuff. You make a hole just like the kind you would dig with a post hole digger !! It can hurt when you fall and it can be hard to get yourself back up out of the hole and onto the hard snow again. I went through once and it took a minute to get myself out. After that I was more careful to stay in the center of the path and to walk lightly in places that looked iffy. 

The Track

A good Post Hole

The weather is beautiful today. The temperature is just at freezing and there is a fresh coat of snow that fell just a couple of days ago. It was sort of heavy snow (maybe with some ice) in this area and the highway was closed for a day with trees down from the snow. There are a lot of trees down on the trail, too, but they have been covered over with more snow so you just have to tramp over them a bit. Lots of huge clumps of snow up in the branches. How did those clumps form? How do they stay up there? 

Big Clump up on top

At this early part of the trail we are actually hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail. My partner and I have hiked this section of the PCT a couple of other times, coming from the North trailhead over by Pioneer Woman's Grave.  At about the 2 mile mark, you break off from the PCT and get on the little loop trail that goes down the hill to the twin lakes. We had started out on the trail with nobody around us, but everyone else seems to be faster than us and we were passed by 10 or so people and by the time we got the lake there was a bit of a party going on. 

But it was well worth it. The Lake was Beautiful. A shinny flat white wonder of a circle with snow crowned pine around the edges. We pulled up a little snowbank, spread out our red tarp and sat down for a nice little lunch in the sun. It was actually a bit hot sitting in the snow in the sun. We could take off our hats and gloves and enjoy ourselves. Some people over next to us were feeding the local Jay population. The little guys would fly down from the trees and land right on your arm and take a nut out of your hand.  

Lunch in the Snow and Sun

After lunch we packed up and headed back up the hill. My partner assured me that all we had to do was climb the half mile back up the PCT and then we could just coast downhill to the car. This was a great plan except that it didn't take into account one thing: rising temperature. We got up on the sun exposed side of the hill and all of a sudden we both started to sink. I was leading and hear my partner sort of laugh. At that same moment I sunk down to my shins in the snow. Oh. I turn around to look at here and she is up to her thigh in a posthole. And right in the middle of the Trail!! She had a pretty hard time getting out, she was in so deep, and then she sunk right back in again. Crap.  The rising temperature of the day had made the snow just soft enough that we could no longer safely walk across it in our boots. We had to move over to a more stable area and take off our packs put on our snowshoes. 

And now we are really Snow Shoeing. Or perhaps Snowshoeing. Either way, we are not Postholing. (see what I did there?) 

See how perfect and deep that track is?

One feature of much of the trail we are shoeing is the shape of the beaten track. It is about 18 inches wide, just wide enough for you snowshoes, and 1-3 feet deep with nice neat square sides. It looks like it was dug with some kind of snow shoveling machine. Like the crisp sides that the snowplows make on the highway. And it has this shape just from people snowshoeing over it in line a few dozen times.  That is all great and everything unless you are wearing the biggest snowshoes that you can find. My partner and I found ourselves in place where we couldn't easily walk because the 2 foot deep trail just wasn't wide enough for us to easily move our snowshoes. We had to step very carefully.  I was really wanting something that was a cross between snow cleats and big snow shoes. I really wanted some small snowshoes..... like the expensive ones that REI sells. Hell, the very smallest ones that Costco sells probably would have been great (if they had fit my boots. I don't know about that). 

When we got back to the PCT intersection, we switched back to cleats.  And then it really was a coast downhill back to the car. 

As we were pulling out of the Sno-park I noticed a few groups of people that had set up tables and cooking stoves. Looked they were going to cook dinner and stay past dark (which is coming along in like an hour). But not us. We figure we can get over the busy part of the pass and on our way down toward Portland before the skiers have finished there last run on the hills. The lifts close at 4:00.

We were wrong. We zipped along until just a mile from Government Camp and then traffic just stopped. We were almost all the way to the Trillium Lake parking lot and we didn't go 100 yards in 2 hours. Not sure what was going on up the hill but I am pretty sure that the only reason we ever moved forward was because people ahead of us bailed and did a U-turn and headed some other direction. We didn't have any cell signal so we couldn't get any traffic reports. We did have enough for a text from our son. He said that trip check showed the traffic, but didn't mention a reason. So after two hours we bailed and went the other way around to go home. This was a major decision. It is 90 minutes to Portland (when the traffic is flowing) if we went west, but going east around was more like 4 hours. But at least we were moving again. Until we weren't. Turns out the traffic was bad both ways. I have posted some conversations on this and people who frequent the mountain say that that is just how things are. There is a choke point coming down from Government camp and things all backup for hours at a time. I think this may explain the people setting up to make dinner at the parking lot. If you are going to be sitting still anyway, might as well have a burger or some soup and sit back and enjoy the night. I am sure things are clear to head home around 8:00 or so.

This guy had just pulled from a sno-park on the left and was heading east until
He saw all of those red lights ahead. Then he did a skidding turn and headed back West.
What he didn't know as that the red lights were even worse in that direction. There is
Some sort of shared information Mesh Wifi App Product Idea in here somewhere.