Opening pic..
Sunday Chiyoko & I set off with our snow shoes in search of snow, & like a lot of other folks this year never took them off our backs
..We set off from the Tilly Jane Trail Head by hiking up through the very quite & closed Cooper Spur Ski Resort to the Polallie Ridge trail.
Chiyoko ready for takeoff
We had the Polallie Ridge trail & the glorious weather to ourselves.
The ridgeline at 5100'
We ran into a large group of folks playing in the snow not far from the Tilly Jane A frame & guessed they had spent the night there.
We continued on up the hill towards the Cooper Spur Shelter.
Still carrying those snow shoes!
We thought that we would have started to see a few other folks by now but we seemed to be the only folks heading up to the shelter in this incredible weather.
We arrived at the shelter to find one other person there who had spent the night & was just packing up & getting ready to leave.
Hot noodles for lunch!
As we were eating lunch we saw one other person skiing down from Cooper Spur but there didn't appear to be anyone else up on the this side of the mountain.
From here we put on our microspikes to make our way over the hard icy snow to the Eliot moraine.
We then walked down the snow free moraine to Cloudcap.
We were treated to the sound of rocks falling every few minutes on both sides of the Eliot as was we hiked down to the Cloudcap campground.
Cloudcap Campground.
[BEGIN RANT]
So the door latch on the Cooper Spur Campground Toilet had been broken for at least 3 years & people would have to use a rock to hold it open or closed. Neither the Forest Service or Camp ground Concessionaire saw fit to fix it in all that time. Well now it seems like the door has blown off it hinges or met with some similar fate. I wonder if it will be fixed now at much greater expense that it would have cost before!
[END RANT]
We walked up the road to check out the Inn which was all boarded up, the place really does have spectacular views in all directions!
Barret Spur from the Cloud Cap Inn Deck.
Next to the Inn is another building called "Snowshoe Cabin", there were some folks staying there. Does anyone know the story behind this cabin, like who owns it & can anyone stay there? Living conditions seeded to be far superior to the Tilly Jane A Frame
From here we hiked down to the Tilly Jane Campground road junction. It seems the Salvage Logging operation (oh sorry, I mean danger mitigation) project along the road continues.
We hiked past the old Tilly Jane guard station & on to the Amphitheater were we met fellow Portland Hikers Team Reynolds! Great to meet you guys up there yesterday guys!
Now we just had the hike down the Tilly Jane trail to go!
The magnificent Lone Ponderosa.
The only time we really needed our microspikes was the last mile of the Tilly Jane Trail down to the trailhead, where the many times trampled thawed & refrozen snow had turned to ice!
Back at the car just before 4:00pm we had 9.5 miles & 3000' of EG on the clock.
By contrast to our excellent day in the Sun the area just below the trailhead & down to highway 35 had remained in freezing fog all day long & looked like this!
A few more pics of the day here & a map below..
although its a drag about the door dilemma.
