May Day May Day Perfect Day for Bell Creek Way

11 miles of hiking • 3500' elevation gain •

Started at the Oneonta TH parking area headed up to Triple Falls to cross the bridge.

Then about 3/10ths of a mile headed up the rock debris field to hit Horsetail Creek Trail.

Hit that trail to get to the Bell Creek Way trail to make a balloon loop back over to Oneonta trail to get back to the car.

A lot of up and down on this, probably even more than the 3500' I logged.

Took me 7.5 hours to this since I was off trail for about 2 miles or more to get up to Horsetail Creek trail. Also the snow, man the snow!, was piled up on Bell Creek Way and almost all the way to where Oneonta meets Franklin Ridge intersection. Post holed a few times and got off Bell Creek Way at least once and had to regroup. Snow is still about 3' deep at 3000' and above if anyone wants to know, but it seems to be melting fast and all the creeks were raging!!

Saw some cat prints I think, someone let me know if those are cat prints, but it made me try to be faster. They were on the boot path during all of the snow and saw a piece of deer leg later on during the descent of Oneonta Trail.

I guess this wasn't as epic as I thought it would be. Might make the trip report more epic on PDX Hikers...

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