This was originally going to be a short wintertime hike on the old Alder Swamp Trail. I was on this trail a couple of years ago with Don, and it is a good wintertime hike. Not too much elevation gain, and usually not too much snow. Well, this year was a little different. We made it to the beginning of the trail, which was not all that easy due to the snow on the roads. There was 6-10″ of snow on the roads – the people that go up to Bagby had pretty much maintained a single track up until the Bagby turnoff. Past that, the tracks disappeared. Once we got to where the trail started, here is what we saw:

We started down the trail, but with all the snow, it was hard to see where the trail was. The beginning of this trail is a little rough (it follows the river at the start and some of it has slid down into the river), and we had a hard time finding where it should go. To top it off, Bodie did something to his foot (he has been having an issue with one of his toenails), and his foot started bleeding. We thought it best to turn around and try something different.

I had read about a new waterfall near the small community of Three Lynx. It was supposed to be a very short hike to the waterfall, so we thought we would try it and see how Bodie did. We found the old Schoolhouse in Three Lynx (edit later- which has now been torn down):

One there, we headed up the road behind the schoolhouse. We passed through this BEAUTIFUL forest along Three Lynx Creek:

Shortly, we found the dam that supplies this small community with water:

We headed up and over the dam and just a little ways past the dam is the BEAUTIFUL 90 foot waterfall!

After spending a few minutes enjoying the waterfall, we headed back the way we came and since Bodie did fine with his foot on this trip, decided to try to hike the “Sounds of Two Rivers” trail. This is an old, unofficial trail up the north side of the Roaring River (hence the name – both the Clackamas snd Roaring rivers can be heard). Here is the “trailhead” for this trail:

We figured we could hike as far as we were able to, or until we got into too much snow, and then turn around. That turned out to be a pretty good plan of attack. We headed up the trail, which was in pretty good shape – I kicked a bunch of branches and rocks off the trail on the way up. There were a few freshly downed trees that I tried to clean up a bit (branches on the trail), but for the most part, the trail was in good shape. Once we got almost to the top of the hill, we decided to stop and have lunch. After eating, we decided to turn around and go back down to the truck.
Although the day didn’t turn out as planned, it was a great day, with great weather, and having my daughter along was a bonus! They don’t get much better than this!