More than a view
A hike in the snow to catch a glimpse of Mt. Thielsen yields rich outdoor experience
Through half-open and groggy eyes, I looked up to see the walls of our tent leaning dangerously overhead, the rainfly plastered to the tent’s thin mesh walls and the burnt orange tent poles straining to stay upright. Unzipping the side of my sleeping bag, I smacked the nearest wall and listened for the hissing vinyl sound of snow sliding down off the tent, followed by the soft thud of powder.
I moaned.
It began a few weeks back when my girlfriend, Kate Wagoner, and our two friends, Rob Denton and Audrey Lavender, who moved from Colorado to Eugene a year back, decided to mark the first weekend of December to spend the night in some Oregon snow near the northern base of Mt. Thielsen. The forecast was bleak: 6 inches of snow expected during Saturday night and wind gusts of nearly 55 mph combined with a three-season tent.
“Sorry I couldn’t give you better news,” the meteorologists at the National Weather Service would say when I checked the reports as our trip neared. But with four different rotating work schedules aligning on rare occasions, we had to go.
Setting up in a parking lot
We left Roseburg Friday afternoon after work and drove east along Highway 138 until the sun set and piles of snow started to line the road at around 5,000 feet. We pulled into the Diamond Lake Resort parking lot to ask where we could pitch our tent for the night before we disappeared into the wilderness Saturday morning. We were pointed in the direction of a snowed in and closed RV parking lot, where we could stash the car, a gold Toyota 4Runner named Ralphie after the University of Colorado’s live buffalo mascot, who handled the fresh December snow with ease.
I yanked the tent out of my backpack, untied our ground tarp and we shoveled a large rectangular patch of snow into a snow wall to protect our sleeping area from the wind.
With the sun already well below the horizon, the stars began to twinkle and the moon, mostly covered by hazy clouds, glistened from the lake’s waters and illuminated our camp through a thin line of snow packed trees.
Once our camp was set, guylines tied and tent vestibules filled with the weekend’s gear, the four of us shed our thick layers and dove into our sleeping bags.
That next morning, we woke up to soft swooshing of steady winds brushing powdered snow to the wintery floor.
Hopping out of the tent, we boiled water for the morning’s breakfast, stuffed our internal frame packs, crowded into Ralphie and drove a few hundred feet up the road to the weekend’s trail head: Howlock Mountain Trail.
The trail
Strapping on our snowshoes and heaving our packs onto our backs, the four us crunched up to the start of the unplowed trail. Snow clung to the branches of trees, with a windblown layer of ice and slush plastered to the side of each truck or trail post. As we set off, the trail narrowed, the thick wall of trees loomed overhead, blocking our view to the left, the right and up above.
Sunlight reflected off the fresh snow, illuminating our entire path with a blinding white light that didn’t match the dark ominous cloud cover that had moved in above, blocking most of the distant views.
Our trail began near the northeast corner of Diamond Lake, about a half mile from the lake’s resort. The route meandered east until it reached a large and flat area called Timothy Meadow that is cut in half by Thielsen Creek, a small trickle of water buried at the time by a few feet of snow. That meadow, lying at approximately the 4-mile mark, was our goal. A steady incline on the way in and a gracious decline on the return trip — gravity, after all, is always appreciated on the second day.
It took a few hours to get to the meadow. Our snowshoes crunched beneath us as they sank into the ground, leaving most of us knee deep in snow as we pushed forward, constantly looking for glimpses of Mt. Thielsen to the southeast or Mt. Bailey to the west.
For hours we trekked, breaking our own trail the entire way, until we stumbled across a humble wooden sign with “Timothy Meadow” etched into it.
Ditching our packs at the sign to save weight, we continued along the trail, determined to catch a glimpse of Thielsen, it’s dramatic horn-shaped peak that rises abruptly from its surrounds, towering some 2,220 feet upward on its north and east faces in near vertical fashion.
Much of Thielsen’s awe comes from its location within the Cascades. No summit in the range is higher until South Sister to the north and Mt. McLoughlin to the south. The mountain’s intimidating and towering faces offer spectacular views from its surrounding wilderness areas — until you make the climb during a winter storm.
We slogged on for another 30 minutes, now desperate for a view, telling ourselves that we would follow five more blue diamond markers, posted on trees to show the way of the trail.
Our view never came.
Camping in the snow
In the meadow we found a large bald area for our tent, away from most of the trees that would be delighted to heave snowballs at our tent throughout the night — or worse — fall over in the strong winds.
The air on the ground was calm, but looking toward the tops of the trees, many were swaying and bending with impressive ease.
Much like the night before, we dug out a trench-like rectangular hole for our tent to sit within. We wrapped the tents guylines around branches and then buried them under a foot of snow, cinching down on the rope at each corner of the tent to protect us from the wind.
When Rob and I returned to the camp with wood for a fire, a small snow replica of Mt. Thielsen sat opposite our tent.
“Look, we found the mountain,” the girls laughed.
As the sun fell below the trees, the plain’s overwhelming silence engulfed our campsite. Nothing echoed, muted by the snow. Even the wind, which was clearly whipping overhead, blew silently, until it would knock off a giant chunk of snow from a branch high above and lob it toward our tent.
“Snow,” we would shout, before ducking our heads and covering our necklines to ensure the freezing powder didn’t jam its way into our clothing.
Once we slipped into the tent, warm from the work of setting up camp and eating our dinner, we decided to wake up early to knock off the night’s accumulation of snow.
At roughly 4:30 a.m., I rolled to my right and smashed into the frozen wall of our tent. No light streamed through the walls until you smacked the side of the tent, knocking off a large patch of snow.
Rob and I quickly jumped into our snow pants, exited the tent and turned around to see a good 6-inches of fresh snow piling on top of our tent. Looking around in the early morning sunlight, thick flakes of snow continued to fall quietly from the sky, almost swerving from their original path for a chance to stick to our tent.
One last chance
We walked back in the snow along the trail we had cleared the day before, which in most places, had been buried by snow.
Within minutes, we made a stop to strip from our thicker clothes down to sweaters, rain jackets or T-shirts.
The sky above had cleared significantly, but only to the west where the lower half of Mt. Bailey, sitting on the opposite side of Diamond Lake, was visible.
Climbing over downed trees, frozen streams and clumps of snow, we marched back to the trail head with lighter packs and more energy as snow stuck to our outstretched tongues.
As we hiked down in elevation, the snow turned to a light rain and slush balls began to slip off trees, signaling we were closing in on our car and that the temperatures were no longer freezing.
In the parking lot, loyal Ralphie looked much like our tent the night before. Uncovering the car, smacking the snow off our packs, pants and shoes, we hopped in and drove off to the lodge, where we had left a note to call for help if we hadn’t returned by nightfall.
At the resort, we checked in and changed clothes, making sure to stand in front of the lodge’s massive wood fireplace.
From there, we took a slight detour to the intersection of Highway 138 and Highway 230 to a Mt. Thielsen viewpoint in an effort to quench our thirst for a view of the distant spire.
Turning the corner, all four of our heads whipped around, ducking to see the snow covered mountain on the horizon. Our eyes looked longingly from the treeline and followed upward what should have been the rocky peak.
Nothing. Our weekend view was blocked by the thick, gray cover of clouds.
“Oh bummer,” Audrey said sarcastically. “We’ll just have to come back again this summer.”
