Mt. Hood View

We hiked from the state park at the top of Satus Pass up to the high meadows there. Recent conditions left the deep snow crisp on top with a soft underlayer. Trudging up the hill on our snowshoes was work, as we were breaking trail most of the way. If I get on the scale and find that the numbers are higher, I will be very much annoyed.

The sun was glorious. We stopped to put on sunblock--not something we often do in winter, but my face was already getting a bit pink. The sky was blue as blue can be. The snow on the meadow gleamed. Though there was some sign of previous snowshoe hikers on the road up the hill, the meadow itself was touched only by trails of deer or rabbits, and some mysterious tracks that looked like a large bird.

We crossed to the far side of the meadow where there was a "window" between the trees so that we had an amazing view of Mt. Hood miles away in Oregon. Although I had hiked there years ago in the summer with my Camp Fire group and knew that we could see the mountain in the distance, we had not had this opportunity in our recent winter visits because the weather did not cooperate.

A funny story about those long ago summer hikes. We had a new member in the group when we camped at the park and hiked to the meadow. She was sure we were going to hold an initiation, and continued asking when her initiation was going to happen, what would she have to do for her initiation, to the point that we were tired of telling her there was no initiation ritual. While we were hiking across the meadow, we came across a large rock. We decided that it was the time and place for her initiation. We had her stand on the rock on one foot, and told her to say "oh wa tah goo sigh am!" slowly at first and then faster.

Try it.

Back to today's hike. As we traveled farther across the meadow to reach a point with the best view of Mt. Hood, I stopped to take another picture of the strange tracks. Bee-bee-beep. What is this? "Card Error."

I don't think I have ever had a camera card fail before. Even when I had a camera fail because of condensation that somehow got inside it, the pictures on the card were salvageable. Sad to say, I probably lost at least a couple dozen photos. I will try a couple of other things tomorrow with my other camera at school and with the card reader I have there.

So I can't share that glorious view with you today. Perhaps we will have another opportunity to do this hike with blue skies and sunshine on the snow. If we do, believe me, there will be an extra card in my pack and an extra battery as well.

I did discover later--too late to get another picture of Hood--that this camera does have some internal memory which does not kick in if there is a card in the slot. I will know that for the future, too.