1/6, Saturday. Cloudy. 10 of us met up at 7am at a Starbucks to hike Tamanawas Falls. Was drizzling when we left, more rain on I-84. Clouds began to lift when we turned south from Hood River, until we could see Mt. Hood.
We were the 2nd car at the parking lot. Need micro-spikes just to walk at the parking lot this early in the morning. Temperature was 31°F. We started hiking just before 9am. The entire trail was frozen and icy. No snow on trail, and not much snow all around, but everything was encased in ice. Quite pretty. Hiking poles were useless, sliding right off the ground. Some earlier muddy sections were now frozen footprints. Sketch if you don't have spikes under your shoes! One boy, who's not a member of this women's meetup, but came as a +1, was wearing Yaktrax Walker - not enough traction. He fell off a slope at one point. Taylor went down to help. I pulled up him and later Taylor from the trail, and quickly realized that I had difficulty holding on rocks, as they were all coated with ice and hard to grip.
The otherwise unimpressive Coldwater Creek was pretty with icicles lining all the tree branches over the water. The waterfall is as pretty as I remembered. The icicles are much smaller than last time when I was here. Probably due to the warm weather we had last week. Instead of covered by snow, the rock pile next to it looked like a mound of jelly fish, each rock was draping with icy tentacles. Very cute. We had the whole place to ourselves.The sun came out when we were almost back to the trailhead, ~11:20. On the way back, met 2 dogs (sliding around), 4-5 in snowshoes, some in spikes, but many without any traction devices - they all had to turn back. One twisted his ankle. Parking lot was full.
This is a short hike. 2 miles one way. Back at meeting place in Portland ~1:30pm. Early enough that I could prepare food to take to the potluck gathering in the evening.
