"Must be beautiful this time of year, with all that snow..."

Since the snow hasn't been exactly coming to us, we ventured out to it.

We spent a lovely weekend with LB who's hopes of biking and skiing were dashed by the rainy/icy weather and a renegade derailleur.

I couldn't believe the luck, we had just had a week of clear and dry days with sunshine- so clear that I could even see the snow covered mountains.

In lieu of these other activities, we opted to go out on the gorge and try our luck with some of the hiking trails and if there was any additional luck available, continue on to Hood River for lunch.

There were DOT warnings about the road conditions, so we skipped Hood River in favor of Edgefield and mercifully exited to our hiking area before chains were required.

We spent a few hours tramping around Elowah Falls and took a load of photos. There was just enough snow to make the short hike hard work and to make the surroundings beautiful.


We hiked down to the bottom of Elowah Falls which was almost completely snowed over and had coated the surrounding area in a thick layer of ice-

And we endured the somewhat frightening sound of falling icicles which echoed in the canyon, glancing around at each other and up to the cliff faces to see whether there was any true danger...it was a bit of a laugh.

We then tracked back and went to the top of the falls and encountered the most incredible icicles I've ever seen. We weren't able to go to the proper end of the trail because a small ice avalanche had taken out the guard rail and made the way impassable.






All in all it was a lovely day out of the house and ended with some good pints of beer and an early evening.




















Icicles:

End of trail...