Memorial Day and Mt. Hood

I had a good Memorial Day weekend. I laid pretty low. I had just finished a 10-day workweek making up for the days I took off for Becca's visit, so I was ready to relax. Everyone else in the house was either off visiting friends or had family flying into Portland to visit. This made for a nice weekend spent doing a lot of reading and relaxing in a large, empty house.

On that Sunday I drove to Gresham, just outside Portland, to get fitted for a tuxedo for Nathan's wedding. On the way back I decided to drive through the mountains. I had talked to a fellow at work who suggested that Timberline Lodge was a very pretty place. It is on Mt. Hood at around 6000 feet. He told me to go on a clear day for maximum vista enjoyment. There is a ski slope there, and during the summer you can ride the chairlift up to the top. I asked him how late in the year I would have to wait for that and he told me "could be tomorrow."

The day was overcast. Definitely not ideal, but I have driven 84 to and from Portland a number of times, so I figured I might as well go through the mountains anyways. It would at least be something new.

At around 4000 feet it looked like this:


It was rainy and there was a lot of snow still on the ground. As I climbed, I passed in and out of clouds. At times there was even blue sky. Timberline Lodge, however, was seated in a nice cloud of drizzle. I decided to come back another day.

As I continued on eastward through the mountains, the clouds quickly broke. I stopped at one of the sno-parks and went for a brief hike. There was still several feet of snowpack, but it was dense enough that I could walk on it fairly well even without snowshoes or skis.

I didn't go too far. While it was possible to walk, the difficulty took away my desire to do a long hike that day, as I'd hoped to. But I did enjoy hiking for a while. I've never been to a place where you could go snowshoeing in what is practically June. It was pretty neat. Here are a few pictures: