Timberline Trail Circumnavigation July 15-17

[BarleynHops]

For some reason we can’t wait to get into the high country this year so we decided to do another early volcano circumnavigation, this time clockwise on the Timberline trail around Mt Hood.

We arrived at Top Spur trail head at midnight on 7/15 and hiked up the trail toward McNeil Point for a couple of miles before finding a nice flat spot to cowboy camp. After a restless few hours of sleep we woke up at 06:00 to begin our hike.

Foggy start heading up to McNeil Point

Snow patches started around 5,600 ft and became continuous snow around 6,000 ft.

There were tracks from other hikers heading up McNeil pt and the climbers route, which we followed. We continued up the climbers route a short time before realizing our error. After consulting the GPS and our map we figured out where the trail was. We got back on track at Cairn Basin, which is still covered in a lot of snow.

A half-melted out fire ring confirms our arrival to cairn basin

We stayed high above Wyeast Basin, getting on Barrett ridge above Elk Cove before dropping down to the trail.

With the fire damage, we were surprised to see way less downed trees than we expected. And the trees that were downed were easy to maneuver. There are a few downed trees when dropping into Elk cove. This one was probably one of the worst to maneuver, most were easier than this.

Elk Cove is perhaps 50% melted out, and there are a couple of nice camp sites completely melted out. Here's the meadow

2011 was the first year we didn't hiked the Timberline trail in the last six years so it was interesting to see the Dollar Lake fire damage. Most of the fire damage is just North of the trail. When the trail does run through a fire damaged area, it is very easy to follow on a traverse but can become obscure in flat areas.

Continuing from Elk Cove, snow covers hundreds of yards of trail per patch.

Crossing Coe Creek

The west branch of Compass Creek seemed sketchy to us. The snow was pretty exposed crossing the snow bridge over the creek.

We decided instead to cut off trail below the falls to ford the creek. We then bush wacked up the steep slope back to the trail.

Looking back towards Elk Cove & the fire damage

More fire damage trail

[BarleynHops]

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[BarleynHops]

We were a bit nervous of what we would find at Elliot; mostly we were concerned about either the river being covered in snow like Compass Creek (wouldn’t want to cross that snow bridge and have it collapse!) or if the river was running too deep. We were pleasantly surprised when we saw no snow covering Elliot at the ford. Elliot was perhaps knee deep at 3:00 in the afternoon. The ropes on both sides of the river are in place and are in good condition. If you’ve traversed across Elliot before, we found conditions to be no different than when we’ve crossed it later in the hiking season.
Descending:

Fording the river. Don't worry, we carried the dogs across:

Ascending:

From Cloud Cap to Gnarl ridge is basically snow in the low spots with trail on the upper parts of each draw.

Cairns are visible and easy to follow although we did get too high somehow and had to drop down to the trail at Gnarl ridge.

Upper Gnarl ridge is mostly clear of snow until dropping into the trees.

Once in the trees there are large snow patches. Some of the patches were fairly slick and steep, we were grateful to have our Katoolah Micro spikes.

We camped half way down Gnarl ridge.

Descending Gnarl ridge to Clark Creek was clear of snow. Crossing Newton Creek:

Large patches of snow picked up again after Clark Creek until exiting Mt Hood Meadows. There are some long, steep tongues of snow in the gullies climbing up out of Clark Creek to Mt. Hood Meadows that made us grateful, once again, to have our micro spikes.
Clark Creek:

Mt. Hood Meadows:

White river was no problem to cross, didn't have to get our feet wet either!

Once at Timberline lodge we reentered snow for a mile or two. There are plenty of foot tracks in the snow which both helped and hindered our navigation.

[retired jerry]

Very adventerous of you to do this so early. You made good time too. Thanks.

Could you have done it without GPS?

[BarleynHops]

There is no snow on the west side until just after the Paradise junction where we encountered patches of snow. The trail was not hard for us to follow.
Dropping into Zigzag canyon:

Crossing Zigzag river, calf high:

We camped on a ridge with sweeping views of Mt Jefferson and the Cascades. The clouds started to stack up a bit and we got a light sprinkle.

The trail between Zigzag canyon and Sandy was pretty much clear of snow with a few patches:

Some of the patches were pretty tall still:

Yay for microspikes!

We then dropped down to the Sandy for lunch before the finally push past Ramona Falls and up Bald Ridge. Sandy river had a nifty little bridge in place so we didn’t have to get our feet wet.

My hubby loves hiking the PCT whenever he can so we stayed on trail 2000 instead of going up higher on the Muddy river. A nice solid log provided easy crossing of Muddy River on trail 2000.

All major fords are running high with spring run off so we got our feet wet multiple times. However, the fords were between mid-calf and knee high. The Timberline Trail should be in much better shape in 2-3 weeks but for those up for an adventure it is open for business!

[Chase]

Job well done. I sometimes also take the lower PCT and avoid the Muddy Fork problem. The PCTA needs to to fix that Muddy Fork problem more long term, perhaps by re-routing the trail over that ridge a bit.
I look forward to doing this loop in the next few weeks. Thanks for the pics and descriptions!

[BarleynHops]

Hi Retired Jerry! I think using a GPS depends on how comfortable one feels about trail finding on large patches of continuous snow and how familiar one is with the trail being hiked. We used the GPS once: to determine how far above the trail we were near Cairn basin. Beyond that we did not use the GPS, however we are very comfortable reading a map and route finding in large amounts of snow (my husband has an uncanny intuition of where trail is, I'm always impressed ) Also we have hike the Timberline trail quite a few times and roughly know where the trail goes.

So for us, we definitely could have left the GPS at home. Definitely glad we had microspikes for our trail running shoes!

BTW: Thank you mjirving, dixhuit, Rabid Swan, Schoolteacher John, and Thunder Thigh 3 and other the early trip reports of Mt Hood this year, it really helped in our planning.

[Rabid Swan]

I'm glad my TR's could be of use and thanks for yours! It's good to see the Cooper spur to Timberline section. I'm now officially planning a TT hike in the near future!

[mattisnotfrench]

Nice report! That's awesome that you did the TT so early. Congrats on that!

How did the conditions look at Paradise Park? It would seem that area is now snow-free judging by your report.

[pdxpoppadaddy]

I've been dreaming of doing the TT for a few years now. I keep searching for "Timberline Trail 20xx" with year info to see what kind of beta there really is on it and have been discouraged from doing it until now. THANK YOU!!! I'll be using your report as basis for a trip in another two weeks or so and I'm giddy with excitement.

Cheers