Today’s hike was a “get out in the woods hike”. Due to our recent stormy winter weather, I’ve not been able to get out for over a week. We’ve had storms with lots of rain and wind, lost power for 18 hours and much of the Clackamas area is now closed since 224 is closed due to two mudslides with no date for reopening. It has been an eventful winter thus far – hopefully we don’t get a repeat of these storms this winter.

Since 224 is closed, it greatly limits the options for hikes. The Fanton trail in the winter is always a good option, and it is always neat to get to the top of Squaw Mountain, so the plan was to drive as far as I could on 4614 and start the hike at that point. The Fanton trail more or less parallels the 4614 road and there are 3 or 4 points where you can easily access the trail. Originally I was hoping to get to the spot where the 4614 road takes a turn to the north and start from there, but I encountered a lot more snow a lot lower than I was expecting. It is possible I could have made it up there, but since I was by myself, I opted to stop at an unmapped spur road about 2 miles up the 4614 road and start from there.

This was what it looked like where I parked at the access point: 2-3 inches of snow on the road – no one had driven as far as I had gone in a few days – there were no fresh tracks on 4614 past this point:

I unloaded the dogs (I had Otis as well as Thor), suited up and headed up the spur road. It isn’t very far up the road before you get to the spot where the trail is right next to the road. We hopped on the trail and headed east. It wasn’t very long before we got to the first landing area – this is the landing that the spur road we started on heads up to. When looking out from the edge of this landing, there were absolutely no views:

It was snowing lightly at this point but it wasn’t bad at all. We walked a bit further up the trail and in an open area you could see all the fresh new snow all over everything:

We continued on the trail and at one point where the dogs hadn’t destroyed any tracks on the trail before I got to them, I noticed some tracks that looked a lot like dog tracks but they definitely weren’t either of my dogs – I’m thinking maybe coyote?

Looking at some online print sites, it does look like a coyote to me.

We continued up the trail, which kind of goes in and out of open areas. It wasn’t long before we got to the “corner”, where the 4614 road heads north. This is what the road looked like here:

I think I probably could have driven all the way up here, but I was being conservative since I was by myself.

We walked up to the landing – by this time, the sun was really trying to peek out from behind the clouds – things were clearing up a bit:

We looked around at the landing – the un-named creek running thru this area wasn’t running nearly as fast as I was thinking it would after all the rain we had last week. I guess that water has already passed thru here.

We continued up the trail. The trail follows that little un-named creek a ways and is pretty level and then veers away from the creek and starts a gentle climb. As we climbed up, the sun started coming out a bit and we got a few sunbreaks thru the trees:

We soon got to the junction with the Old Baldy trail – this would take us up to the old lookout.

Along the way up the Old Baldy trail, Thor decided to do his “beaver” thing in the fresh snow. It always cracks me up – he was LOVING all the fluffy snow:

We soon got to the junction where one direction (to the left) was the continuation of the Old Baldy trail continuing east and straight took us up to the old lookout. We headed straight and the snow continued to get deeper.

The trail goes thru some open spots and on a clear day you can get some interesting views along the way. This is what it looked like heading up to the top:

The trail kind of follows the ridge for a way and then takes a 90 degree turn to the right. It is in this section that can get a bit sketchy in deeper snow. There are a couple of open spots that can accumulate a LOT of snow and they are a bit difficult to traverse. We didn’t have any problems today.

Once past that area, the trail pops out on the 4610-180 spur road which takes you to the top. As we headed up the road I saw these rabbit tracks all over the place:

We continued up the road and got to the radio repeater and then went up to the old lookout location – the steps were buried in snow:

Things were clearing up a bit but we still got no view of Mt Hood today – it was hiding in the clouds:

We looked around a bit – many times I eat lunch up here since it is a nice view, but it was a bit breezy so it was kind of chilly. I decided we’d eat down below in the sheltered area where it was warmer.

We walked over to the north end of the ridge the lookout sits on and took a picture looking back at the lookout:

There is usually a good view from this end as well, but today there wasn’t much of a view.

We headed down to the end of the 4610-180 spur road – there is the foundation of an old garage down there – that is where we ended up having lunch. It was quite a bit warmer down there since it was protected from the breeze.

We had kind of a quick lunch and then headed back down. The trip back down was pretty uneventful, but we made really good time coming back down. I was surprised how quickly we made it back down! About the only thing of note was that around where the Fanton trail took off from Old Baldy the temperature must have increased above freezing because it was about that spot where the trees started dripping on us. Above that I think it must have been below freezing because the trees were not dripping even though they were loaded with snow.

At the last landing before the truck, we walked out to the landing to take another look. Things had obviously cleared up quite a bit but you still couldn’t see Squaw/Tumala mountain – it was hiding in the clouds:

After that last landing we soon hit the spur road and were back at the truck. One thing I hadn’t really realized before is that this spur road is the one that led up to that first landing and kept going along the edge of the cut. It actually goes about a half a mile up from 4614. You can’t drive it anymore since they tank trapped the beginning of it though. It looks like some people have been trying to get around the tank traps though. I didn’t see any evidence of anyone making it up the road recently though.

After back at the truck the dogs were pretty tired – they just wanted to get in and lay down. I packed up and headed home. I thought it would take longer for this hike – I probably could have started at the beginning of Fanton and made it all the way, but we did 7 miles – it was a good day. This is a beautiful trail in the snow and I always love hiking it.