The plan for today’s hike was to see how far we could get up the Rho Creek trail. The modeled snow depth maps showed no snow at the trailhead and then about halfway up the trail, the snow quickly getting deeper, with 3 feet plus deep near the road crossing. It turned out to be incredibly accurate. We also thought if we had enough time we would go on the east side of the river to look for any old trail there. Coming home from another trip last year we did some searching (and found!) some of the tread below the existing trailhead. We mostly followed it down to the river and it looked as though the trees on the east side had not been cut, so we were hopeful we’d find something.

The weather report for the day wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible either. We were expecting a bit of rain at times, but not a lot of rain. That turned out to be pretty accurate as well.

Since we had workers in our driveway, instead of meeting at our house, I picked up Kirk at his house and we headed back to Estacada. We made good time and got to the trailhead about 10:30. As expected, there was no snow at the trailhead. We suited up and headed up the trail. The beginning of the trail survived the winter well, but as we got furthr up the trail, we encountered more downed trees, some of them pretty large. At one point, there was this group of HUGE uprooted trees downhill from trail that we needed to explore:

We continued up the trail, doing a bit of lopping and cleaning up as we went. When we encountered downed logs we tried to clean up what we could and make passage a bit easier. The trail could use a pass with a chainsaw for sure – that is kind of sad because it just was clear of logs last year – last winter was not kind to the trail it appears.

A bit further up the trail where the creek gets closer, there is a neat spot where the trail creek creates an island – I thought it was interesting because of the snow:

We continued up the trail and at some point we got our first real glimpse of snow on a rockslide across the drainage (it was a north facing slope) – a this point the trail still had zero snow on it:

We continued up the trail and we saw our first bits of snow on the trail at about 3300′ – not much but it would get very deep, very quickly:

The creek got close to the trail again and I took this photo showing Rho Creek with the snow on the north facing slope above it – I just liked how it looked:

It wasn’t long before the snow started getting really deep – this was about 3500′ where the snow was at least 2′ deep:

We soon got to the junction with the old abandoned Tumble creek trail:

And the snow continued getting deeper and deeper – this was at about 3600′ and it was probably 3 feet deep:

At some point in this vicinity, it started lightly raining and there was some snow mixed with the rain. It didn’t last too long but it was interesting to see the snow falling.

Shortly before you get to Fadeaway springs, you cross a small, un-named creek. Normally, it isn’t even a rock hop as it is so small, but today it was definitely a rock hop:

We crossed the creek and made our way up and this is what the trail looked like right below Fadeaway springs – lots of snow – it was hard to follow the trail at this point:

We got to Fadeaway springs and found it full:

From this point we discussed whether we wanted to go any farther – it was getting increasingly difficult. We decided to try and head up to the 4672 road, which was pretty tough – I’m not even sure we followed the trail the whole way – the snow was so deep it was really hard to see where it went. We did find the last bit of trail popping out onto 4672. We got up to the road and found 3-4′ of snow:

The trail continues above the road, and we figured it would get a bit better for a while since there are big trees above the road, but shortly you pop out on top and it is small trees and rather open, so the snow would have been really deep. We decided to make this our turnaround point. Walking in the snow is pretty exhausting, especially without snowshoes.

We headed back down and I got this picture of the view from the cut below the 4672 road:

Going back down was easier than it had been coming up, but it was still difficult in the deep snow. We postholed a few times and I for one was happy when we got back to solid ground – we were able to make a lot better time on the solid ground.

At some point on the way back, we stopped to move a small tree off the trail – we did some cutting and lopping and it uncovered something I don’t ever recall seeing – a spring right next to the trail:

I’m guessing this particular spring only runs in the winter and spring so it is possible I’ve never been on the trail when it was running – but it was still interesting I thought.

We continued to do a bit of lopping and cleaning on the way back down, but we were making pretty good time. We got back to the truck about 4:00 and decided to head south on 46 to see if we could find any remnants of trail on the east side of the river. Kirk had a track of what we had found on the west side of the river so we had an idea where to look. The old maps showed the trail basically headed straight east once it crossed the river. It was near a section line so we stopped there and got out to look. Unfortunately, there has been some thinning done in this area – maybe a long time ago, but it looked pretty significant and it appears it messed up any chances of finding any remnants of trail. At least we tried…..

After searching for trail for about an hour, we headed back. Thor was tired and slept the whole way home. We stopped at Time Travelers in Estacada for dinner since they weren’t really busy. It was a nice way to end the day. It was a great day of exploring in the snow, but I was pretty tired when we got home.