The time it took for me to drive from Mehama to the trailhead (about 20 miles) took longer than the time it took to drive from Corvallis to Mehama via i-5 & hwy 22. The first 10ish miles are paved but curvy. Then theres a few miles of paving but with lots of trees on the shoulder and trickling down to 1 useable lane in places. Then the last 10ish miles are treacherous. One Caveat, I have a Dodge Neon, so it's not really designed for handling the conditions I found, I'm sure a 4runner or f150 would have been fine. There were potholes more or less continuously through the entire gravel section. I was on the road at about noon, and there was between 0 and 8 inches of snow on it, obscuring many of the pot holes. In conjunction with the snow and potholes, there were boulders from winter time slides and freshly chainsawed tree trunks. It would just keep getting worse and worse, and I'd think about turning around and giving up, but then I'd get a beautiful view, and the road would clean up from exposure and I'd make it another quarter mile before slowing back down to 5 miles an hour.
Exhibits A & B.
The trailhead itself had 5-10 cars at it when I got there, and many of them weren't much better equipped for the terrain than I was, which was a little bit reassuring.
I took a bunch of photos of the hike, but will only post a few to save y'all the scrolling. It was cold, but not freezing, so lots of the miscellaneous snow was melting and pelting unsuspecting hikers from the tree branches looming over the trail.
The north side of the creek that had the road on it had plenty of use so the snow was packed and not too bad to hike on. Once I got to the Opal Pool, I decided I'd rather make a lollypop than an in-and-out, so I tried to follow the trail on the south side of the creek. I was apparently the first person over there since the most recent snow, so I had to do some trail finding, and some post-holing, but luckily I had geographic bounds that prevented me from getting more than 20 feet off course. About halfway through the southside romp, I ran into a couple who were the first people hiking the other direction of the loop, so, after that I could just follow their tracks and got to enjoy some soggy shoes.
I had hoped to get to the cedar grove? on the map that is indicated as about a mile up from the Opal Pool, but the trail was completely hidden by snow and my ignorance of having never been here, so I had to give up on that dream, but I did a little bit extra on the main road to get my total distance to a little over 10 & 1/2 miles. With my lunch & photography breaks, it was about a 3:15 hike, so, despite the snowy weather, I kept a pretty good overall pace of about 18 minute miles. I have to say, I never expected trekking poles to boost my speed so much, but they probably shave 5-8 minutes off a mile, which I've found to be the most useful part of owning them.
I'll definitely add this to the 'come back to when its warm and sunny, and camp out here some weekend in July' list.
