Mount Hood April 2022. Just as it looked like this was going to be a fairly dry winter – April came along. So far this has added over 40″ of new snow, as well as having dropped the snow level down to 1500′ for a while. For a few days hiking in April looked very much like hiking at the end of December. This spring addition has brought the snow depth to about 95% of average. Snow now covers many of the lower peaks – like ZigZag mountain and TDH.
Mount Hood Snow – Mid February 
Mount Hood Snow – Mid April
All of this is great news for the snowpack – but it is likely to both delay the start of the hiking season and add to the early season runoff into the glacial streams. It’s not uncommon to have snow at Burnt and Cast Lake on Memorial Day weekend and even later at Paradise Park and parts of the Timberline Trail.
Since October I’ve been looking to make it over from the ZigZag Mountain Trailhead – over to West ZigZag Mountain lookout and back down to Forest Road 27. On several occasions I’ve got pretty close to the summit height, but have found persistent snow on the trail at around 4’000 feet. Certainly, with spikes, it looked doable. Now, however, I am back to wondering if this will be a late May loop!
There have been some excellent late spring skiing days!
