Snowshoeing – BOOTS on the TRAIL

Mount Ashland Snowshoe (Southwest Oregon) 03-Mar-2021

2021-03-032021-03-04Posted in Hiking (Snowshoes), Southern OregonTagged Hiking (Snowshoes), Mount Ashland Oregon, Mount Ashland Ski Area, Mount Ashland Sno-Park, Snowshoeing, Southern Oregon4 Comments

March? So soon? One day we’re buying our annual Sno-Park pass and the next the snow is melting. More storms are forecast but they’ll increasingly bring rain (if we’re lucky) rather than snow. Winter isn’t a protracted business here – our local ski area typically closes at the end of April. In just another month or so, we’ll be going on and on about wildflowers – which, although very good things, are not snow. So although we had some longer hikes in mind for today, we decided instead to do a short, but aerobic, snowshoe sprint to the summit of Mount Ashland. Get the blood flowing. Feel a cold wind in our faces. Discover seemingly bottomless voids in the snow cover. Totter over steep slopes with boards strapped to our feet. Take in the view. Further amortize our snow pass. And so on…

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Daley Creek Snowshoe (Ashland, Oregon) 04-Feb-2021

2021-02-042021-02-05Posted in Hiking (Snowshoes), Southern OregonTagged Beaver Dam Campground Oregon, Beaver Dam Trail #1001, Daley Creek Campground Oregon, Deadwood Junction Sno-Park Oregon, Hiking (Snowshoes), Snowshoeing, Southern Oregon

The weather had alternated between wet and dry for a few days, with an inversion fog in the valley. Then a really big storm blew through yesterday, leaving in its wake a nice layer of fresh powder snow in the high country. We’d been confined to town by volunteering, work, and the weather. But when today dawned bright and clear and our schedules were (suspiciously) empty, we took the opportunity to head up to the Deadwood Junction Sno-Park for a snowshoe hike near Daley Creek. This particular route had been on our to do list for a few years, ever since we saw it on the Ashland Hiking Group’s website.

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Brown Mountain Snowshoe (Southwest Oregon) 18-Jan-2021

2021-01-182021-01-19Posted in Hiking (Snowshoes)Tagged Brown Mountain Oregon, Fish Lake Oregon, Hiking, Hiking (Snowshoes), Mount McLoughlin, Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), PCT, Snowshoeing, Southern Oregon, Summit Sno-Park2 Comments

We had a nice, big (for Southwest Oregon) snowstorm at the start of 2021. This allowed us a first-of-the-year snowshoe below Mount Ashland through wonderfully fluffy powder snow. Since then, however, not much frozen joy has fallen from the sky. What has descended is a little more rain at warmer temperatures. We are, of course, hoping for colder temperatures and more snow before Spring – mainly because that snow is our water supply. In the interim, we figured it would be prudent to do some snowshoeing on what snow we have. In addition, getting above the thick fog (again) shrouding the valley seemed like a great idea. Plus, we could slap a little more amortization on this year’s annual Sno-Park permit. 🙂

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Bull Gap Snowshoe (Mount Ashland) 05-Jan-2021

2021-01-052021-02-18Posted in Hiking (Snowshoes), Southern OregonTagged Bull Gap Nordic Trail, Hiking (Snowshoes), Mount Ashland Oregon, Snowshoeing, Southern Oregon11 Comments

Finally, finally, 2021 has arrived and the year that will no longer be named is gone. We’re all hoping the year ahead will be better and brighter. And we’re willing to believe it will – in time. But the Big V is still loose in the land, and the vac jabs are running late, so there’s likely to be more suffering to endure before it’s over. We’ll get there. In the meantime, we’re not going to heap so many “wonderful” expectations on still fresh 2021 that it suffers performance anxiety and disappoints. It’s fine with us if it just ends up being – gasp! – boring. 🙄

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Summit Shelter Snowshoe (Oregon) 06-Jan-2020

2020-01-062020-01-08Posted in Hiking (Snowshoes), Southern OregonTagged Fremont-Winema National Forest, Jackson Klamath Winter Trails, Klamath Falls Oregon, Mount McLoughlin, Snowshoeing, Southern Oregon, Summit Shelter Oregon, Summit Sno-Park, Summit Sno-Park Oregon2 Comments

Trail sign for the Jackson Klamath Winter Trails system outside Klamath Falls, Oregon

Today the snow telemetry (SNOTEL) site at Billie Creek Divide indicated a snow depth of just 25 inches – less than half the historical median depth for this day. But we deemed it enough to snowshoe some of the Jackson Klamath Winter Trails near Billie Creek. These trails are old roads that wind their way through the forest starting from the Summit Sno-Park off Highway 140. We sketched out a figure-8 loop on the Petunia, McLoughlin, and Lower Canal Nordic Trails with the Summit Shelter as our goal (and turn-around point).

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