Bull Of The Woods December 10-11, 2011
Posted: December 12th, 2011, 9:58 pm
A friend and I headed off early Saturday morning to hike in to the Bull Of The Woods fire lookout. Prepared with chains for the truck and shovels (just in case), the plan was get as close to the 550 trailhead as possible. We started hitting snow drifts around 3500', nothing too scary. At about 4000' we threw in the towel on driving any farther, 1.5 miles short of the trailhead. We were in and out of the snow shoes on the hike up the road grade to the trailhead, it wasn't too bad. Once we hit the trail it was mostly snowshoes on all the way in. Been in here several times in the past we knew what our reward would be for our hard work...
The last .5 miles the trail was rough going. The slushy snow had now started to freeze up, and we burned up some serious energy to get to the tower. Needless to say I did'nt stop for too many pictures, but managed to snap a few.
Dashing through the snow..
The long road grade.
The trailhead.
The trail along the way.
View of Hood from the ridge..
And of course the tower the next morning..
It was a cold night inside the tower, it does not have the best R-value insulation... We got rested up for the trip out the next morning. It took close to 6 hours to get there, and only 3.5 to get back out. We were lucky the snow was firm enough to ditch the snowshoes, and rely on the boot chains most of the way out.
A trip I will never forget...
The last .5 miles the trail was rough going. The slushy snow had now started to freeze up, and we burned up some serious energy to get to the tower. Needless to say I did'nt stop for too many pictures, but managed to snap a few.
Dashing through the snow..
The long road grade.
The trailhead.
The trail along the way.
View of Hood from the ridge..
And of course the tower the next morning..
It was a cold night inside the tower, it does not have the best R-value insulation... We got rested up for the trip out the next morning. It took close to 6 hours to get there, and only 3.5 to get back out. We were lucky the snow was firm enough to ditch the snowshoes, and rely on the boot chains most of the way out.
A trip I will never forget...