It was a really sweet fire lookout at the top of a mountain that we rented for 2 nights early February. We thought it would be a pretty straightforward 4 mile ski up to the lookout, but....
Wait...let's start at the beginning. We started out by renting my skis at Otto's in Sandy, Oregon. I lived in Sandy, Oregon until the tender age of 4 and have a special place in my heart for Sandy.
Here we are driving over the Mt Hood pass towards Central Oregon. Brian said there was more snow on the pass than he'd ever seen. We passed 7 snow plows. They go *really* slow. It took us a long time to get over the pass...
And....we finally make it to our starting point. Albeit a little bit later than we hoped. We started up the mountain at 3:30 pm.....knowing that we'd be skiing the last bit in the dark. No worries - we had our head lamps with us.
Here we are about a mile in. Can you see the fire look out there at the top of the mountain? It's a little black speck on a white crest mountain top. I about had a heart attack when it finally came in view to me. It was clear to me that I had to somehow get myself from this point to that point. And it became clear to me that this wasn't going to be easy.
Here I am after we had skiied 3 miles. One more to go. Can you see the black dot on the top of the mountain behind me?? I'm pretty exhausted by this point. I keep falling in some icy spots, and it gets dark right about now.
Okay- that was the longest mile I have EVER gone. Looks so easy here in the photos with the nice fire as the next picture. However there was some delerium, 2 and 1/2 hours of skiing in the dark, and losing the trail at the top of the mountain in between seeing our last glimpse of the lookout and this fire picture below. I don't really want to relive that mile again in my life, however, so I'll move on to the good stuff. Ah....a cabin (we found it!!!), fire wood that was cut for us, and a beautiful wood stove.
But it was all soooo worth it. Look at just one of our views...
This is how we found the port-a-potty. Snowed in. :-)
We kept the fire going the whole two days we were there. It got to 90 degrees at one point in that little room.A sunset....
Followed by sunrise to the east. 
Ahhh.......
