April 9, 2015, Mt. Hood Vista Ridge Trail

A couple of friends and I decided to check out some terrain on Mt. Hood that was completely new to us after a friend turned me onto it after a day hike he did. Its on the northern flank of Mt. Hood on Vista Ridge. The trailhead is reached via Forest Road 1650 off of the Lolo Pass road and the trail takes you up into the Wy East Basin at the toe of the Ladd Glacier. The hike is a bit of a slog through the burn area from the Dollar Lake Fire and its about 2 miles from the trailhead to where you enter the basin and get the goodies. Once up there, the terrain choices are abundant and have a ton of variety to appeal to any riding level and style.

On this exploratory mission, we got a bit of a late start and due to the recent new snow, the last 2 miles of 1650 had a bout a foot of untracked, wet heavy snow on it. We did make it to the trailhead without any real problems with the Explorer in 4 low and we started skinning right from the trail head. The amount of snow on this side of the mountain actually surprised me considering how bad this year has been and we had some pretty fun runs hitting the small cornices and blasting down the wide open and untracked bowls. The snow was super wet, heavy and sticky but still better than any resort riding this season.

We were able to ride most of the way back down one footed to occasionally skate  and the ride through the burn area was at times unnerving due to the limited depth and all of the evil looking snags a person could kabob themselves on! All in all, a super fun day, great workout and gorgeous scenery shared with some good friends. Thats what snowboarding is about right? I am looking forward to coming back and maybe even camping up at the tree line in order to make a full day of lapping all of the playful terrain in this upper basin. Definitely worth the work to get there and currently the best snow on Mt. Hood.

Here`s the pics!