hello,
i am in warner springs right now and am considering jumping ahead past all of the california snow. my plan is to go from kennedy meadows to ashland and hike north to manning, possible in early to mid-june.
does anyone have any advice in regards to this hairbrained idea? snow conditions in southern oregon? bugs at this time? etc.
thanks much, bill
bill
Take into account that if you skip too early to anywhere but Manning You will probebly be the first hiker of the season in that section. That means you wont have foot prints in the snow to follow, so route finding and postholing would be much more diffcult. There should be dozens of hikers leaving manning in June.
A good source for weather is:http://www.skitiger.com/weather/index.html
Take into account that there are few snow sensors in Oregon and some might show false info (the snow level in crater lake is probebly about 50 inch and didnt jume to 280 inch in a day as the sensore shows.
Good luck
roni
Roni, there are a lot more snow sensors in Oregon than the ones on the ski website you posted.
For a comprehensive look try:
http://www.or.nrcs.usda.gov/snow/maps/oregon_sitemap.html
This one shows 57" at Annie Springs near Crater Lake as of today at 6020’ elev. and you would find the Oregon PCT at that elevation frequently, but usually lower. Cascade Summit (O’Dell Lake) shows 37.6" at 4880’ elev. The Irish Taylor site at the south end of Three Sisters Wilderness is showing 56" at 5500’ elev. McKenzie pass is 28.2’ at 4800’ elev. As you move north, there is less and less snow at a similar elevation. The sensor at Hogg Pass is reporting only the 1/2" that fell last night. I am not sure exactly where Hogg Pass is, but it is at 4760’ elev. somewhere near Santiam Pass. I would guess based on this reading that you will see substantially less snow after you emerge from the north end of Three Sisters Wilderness. Going north the next snow sensor that is anywhere near the PCT is a hundred miles or more north of Santiam Pass at Clackamas Lake which is a small lake just south of Timothy Lake. At 3400’ there is less than 2" of snow, all of which accumulated in the last few days. I say it’ll be gone by Friday and you’ll be snow free nobo until the final climb up to Timberline Lodge where there is now 24" at 5400’. The PCT around the west side of Mt. Hood goes up around 6000’ as I recall and down to under 3000’ then up again before it spills out down to the Columbia River.
Bottom line for Oregon right now: It is a very low snow year, but there is snow. There was a little new snow along the Cascade crest last night. In the southern half of the state you will be slogging through quite a lot of snow and where the snow is gone you will encounter epic bug populations. It would make a lot more sense to cover Oregon sobo than nobo at this point.
I don’t think Washington’s data is quite as easy to access, but I’ve heard recent media accounts of no snow at White Pass for instance. For my money, I’d want to start in Washington sobo rather than Oregon nobo, but not for another 3 weeks or a month.
CAVEAT: I’ve never thru-hiked the PCT. I know Oregon pretty well and Washington not so well. I haven’t hiked through any of these sites since last summer and I haven’t eyeballed any of them since February.
Hope this is helpful. I’m sure So Cal is a bit daunting.
HuffnPuff
This entry was written by a hiker who came thru our place a couple days ago…
We just hiked from Manning Park to Hwy 2, beginning on May 25th. There was lots of snow above 5,800’ on north-facing slopes with some avalanche potential. We did observe new releases, though nothing cut out on us. We hiked the first section in 4 days (to Rainy Pass) in 80 degree weather and had few navigation problems. During times of poor visibility, it may be tricky since long sections of the trail are covered with snow. Most of the snow is at Cutthroat Pass. From Rainy Pass to Stevens, there was considerably less snow - only on the north sides of both Suiattle and Buck Creek Passes. We had poor visibilty and had no problem navigating through. Most of the snow was in the Buck Creek Pass area.
We could not do the “hiker re-route” due to the Chiwawa River running very fast, deep (over 6’), and cold. We hiked the “stock re-route”, which involved about 45 miles of road walking. Note that there are plenty of camping options until reaching Hwy 2. Hwy 2 has a lot of traffic and is not fun to walk at all. There are two restaurants at the Hwy 2 / Hwy 207 intersection.
The High Pass cross-country option was totally socked in for us and would have involved A LOT more snow work. Please note that if you go this way and find you cannot cross the Napeequa River, you would have to backtrack back over High Pass, since the Chiwawa River is an even larger river.
Good luck!
Andrea Dinsmore