December 29th, 2012 came along with some beautiful weather in the Mazama area....broken blue skys and a nice 21 degrees.....with my little brother and his wife up visiting through the holiday season we ventured out to play in the snow.....We originally headed up to snowshoe the Cedar Creek trail....but Hwy 20 wasn't plowed past the first sign at the bottom.....and when we came across the Early Winters bridge we could see trucks and cars parked on both sides of the road....somewhere between 25-40 rigs.....lots of snowmobile trailers.....we decided that we needed to locate another snowshoeing spot with a little less traffic since my brother wanted to do a little snowboarding if possible......so we headed to Yellow Jacket Sno-Park....Large parking area with just a few vehicles parked....we strapped on our gear and headed up the trail....nice easy hike up a groomed snowmobile track....lots of places to step off the trail and explore...we pretty much stuck to the trail on the way up...my brother tried a few side hills for snowboarding....made a few runs.....beautiful views....the ponderous pines are lovely....bright orange-red trunks in the snow.....as we ventured farther up the trail the skies continued to open up and show more blue.....really enjoyed the trail and the folks on snowmobiles were extremely polite as they made their way by us each time.....at one point we found a track down through the trees...pretty clear and seemed an excellent place to snowboard down...we headed down and found a few natural jump areas for my brother to wipe out on his board...pretty amusing to watch......at one point we were standing in snow that was pretty close to 3 feet deep of soft powdery snow....lovely....made for a soft landing.....Ended up being a fabulous day out in the snow...perfect weather for snowshoeing....not to warm and not to cold.....the views and the trees are simply beautiful.....I am sure we will venture out on this trail again before the winter season is over....lots more area to explore....as we headed back thru Mazama the little town was hopping with folks....lots of cross country skiing going on there.....the trails were busy....by this time it appeared like the snowplow had made a token run up the highway to get most of the fresh snow off the road.....this time of year....Mazama is truly the end of the road....but what a wonderful place to be on a winter day.
Echo Basin was our last early spring hike in the Eastern Washington area. We were planning to hike the Frenchman Coulee side that heads toward the waterfall but changed our mind due to the amount of cars parked at the trail head. So down the road just a little ways we went to hike the Echo Basin trail. Even with a early start the sun was way too bright, not hot, just bright. We hiked up the jeep trail that starts on the left hand side of the road as your facing the Columbia River. Didn't seem like a real exciting trail till we reached the sand dunes, which put us closer to the rock walls. Up and over the sand dunes and on up a goat trail to get above the walls. Without really knowing were we were going we just winged it. Lots of faint trails and trails in the sand, hard to know which was the true trail. The rock walls are huge and fascinating, the columns are even more interesting up close. We hiked until we had a view looking down into Echo Basin, and a nice look at th
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