This report comes in a bit late, but Ralph and I had a great time on the classic Mt. Hood Illumination Saddle to Paradise tour a couple of weekends ago.
We got a bit of a late start because we had a car shuttle arranged with some friends, but they had to bail at the last minute. Improvising on the fly, we decided to park at the Paradise trailhead and hitch up to Timberline. After about 10 minutes, we were picked up by a really nice gentleman by the name of Peter who ended knowing some common lawyers friends of ours.
The skin up to I-Saddle was a bit monotonous as usual, but we had beautiful weather and cool tunes on the IPod.
When we got to ISaddle, there were A LOT of people around engaged in all sorts of activities. But it made for a couple of scenic shots. Yocum's looked particularly good.
From there, we caught some sweet corn turns all the way down into the Little Zig Zag drainage. Oh yeah.
From there, it was pretty much a suffer fest to get back to the car. Our friends that bailed had the GPS, which we were going to use to find the trail. We decided to go for it anyway - not the brightest move - and we paid the price with a couple of hours of bushwhacking through the Little Zig Zag drainage. After "zig zaggin" back and forth looking for the trail, we bottomed out in the canyon and knew we were pretty much screwed. We turned around and climbed back up the side hill towards the ridgeline and eventually found the trail headed down the other side. Phew! Almost thought we were gonna spend the night in the forest up there, but we ended up back at the car around 6-ish.
Great day! Corn rules.
Pre-gps, or at least before I got one, the key was to not find yourself below 4k elevation without finding the beginning of the long straighwaway of the Paradise trail. There always seems to be a wee bit 'o desperation finding that trail!
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