Todays hike was intended to be a higher hike – I was hoping I could sneak in one last higher elevation hike before winter set in for good. It was not to be. We started seeing snow on the side of the road below 3000′ and we got up to about 3600′ before turning around. We could have kept going, but the snow was quickly getting deeper and I knew there was no way we would be able to make it, so we turned around at a wide spot where it was easy to turn around. This is what the road ahead looked like – it was quite the winter wonderland:

We stopped and let Thor play in the snow for a bit:

We then turned around and so as not to not make the day a total bust, we decided to hike the Hillockburn trail down to the South Fork of the Clackamas River. It is a pretty short hike, but it is really pretty down by the river. Unfortunately, when we got to the trailhead, we found a bunch of damage from shooters at the trailhead:

We counted at least 6 trees killed by shooters now. That was kind of a sad start to the hike, but we headed down the short trail and pretty soon got to the campsite near the river:

Thor played in the river a bit and we decided we would opt for a late lunch at Fearless in Estacada rather than eating the lunch we brought, so we soon headed back uphill. On the way, we did a little trail maintenance, cutting off a few smaller trees off the trail.

On the way back up the trail, we encountered another group of hikers – which was good – we were a little concerned about shooters shooting down the trail, but we obviously didn’t have to worry since they had come down.

It was a very short, but somewhat disappointing day (since we couldn’t get to our original objective) – but it was really nice to share a hike with Carly – I don’t get to do that too often.