Cathedral Hills Park (Oregon) 26-Jan-2022

We had a huge, intense dump of snow over the Christmas holidays. Rejoicing ensued – as this was seen as the start of the promised (and much needed) wet, cold La Niña winter. 😃 Then high pressure settled in – there has been no precipitation, much less snow, for three weeks. 😥 All the snow and cold has skipped over us and gone East, where it won’t be as appreciated as it would be here. A faint odor of trepidation as to the moistness of our future hangs in the air. We need gloomy weather rather than to be gloomy about the weather. It also doesn’t help that, in the spirit of ” fair and balanced” (cue some sarcasm 😏), we got online subscriptions to both the New York Times and the National Review. These weather worries and too much left/right doomscrolling are starting to make our metaphorical glass seem less than half full.

If it’s not going to rain or snow – and our glass is leaking – the least we could do for our sanity 🤪 was go for a nice, brisk (26℉ / -3.3℃) walk in brilliant sunshine. It was either that or another round of martinis (likely followed by some regrettable incident on our front lawn). So, we headed north to the Cathedral Hills Trail System located just south of Grants Pass. We don’t get to these Hills as often as we do to that other park, so going there is a nice change. It also offers easy hiking on great trails!

We started from the Skyway Trailhead, did the Skycrest Loop, then did the Wild Rose Loop, and finished up by returning along the Upper Hogback Trail for 6.4 miles (10.3 km) with a cumulative 1,200 feet (365 m) of elevation gain. We felt much better. We went home and got an online subscription to Outside Magazine, with the Backpacker option. We don’t know if that qualifies as “fair and balanced” but it is a heck of a lot cheerier read than either the NYT or the NR. 😁

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