Lost In The Right Direction

A Return Trek to the Yellow Jacket Sno-Park.....Lost River Road, Mazama....this time it was snowing pretty good...no snowmobiles on the trail...looked like it had been a day or two since anyone has been up it....the weather was sitting at about 18 degrees but still felt pretty good....My nephew is quiet the trooper....one of my constant companions for hiking and snowshoeing.....I can almost always drag him out to the great outdoor with the promise of a stop at the Cinnamon Twisp Bakery and Blue Star Coffee....We ventured off the trail after we made it up a switch back or two....wandered through the trees...it was quiet the battle to get up the side hill....lots of deep snow and pretty slick....took some effort to make any progress...of course the little one just bombs it up the hill in front of me...makes me feel soooo out of shape....snowshoeing is quiet the exercise.....made it to a fairly even spot and headed out at an angle to connect back with the main trail...it was a pleasant ...

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.....