Snowshoeing at Old Maid Flat

My sister and I wanted to go snowshoeing on Saturday. Getting a late start, and not being up for anything strenuous, we decided to do Old Maid Flat. It was a really beautiful day, sunny and even warm.

Approaching the newly-repaired vehicle bridge over the Sandy River.

Good as new

Below, Deborah is getting ready to hop over the gate blocking vehicle access to the Sandy River bridge. Up to this point we had been wearing our Yak-Trax and not our snowshoes, since the snow was pretty packed. But the afternoon sun made the snow soft and we kept post-holing. So we sat on the gate and donned our snowshoes for the rest of the trek.

Crossing the gate

The Sandy River looking north from the bridge. What a beautiful day!! The river looks so tame right now. It’s hard to imagine it’s raging wrath during high water.

Snowy scene

This was the most we saw of Mt. Hood. Views of it are few and far between on this road, but the clouds hovered around it most of the day making any views of it pretty obscured.

Barely visible

The clouds really rolled in later in the afternoon and it was totally overcast by the time we got back to the car at 4:30. But it didn’t rain or snow. We saw more than a dozen other people out here, both snowshoers and skiers, but it was nothing like Trillium Lake or Mirror Lake. This is a great place to go snowshoeing. Not a lot of views, but it’s easy to get to and easy to walk along and makes for a good winter outing.