I first visited Mt. Hood on March 27th, 2005. I had been seeing some friends in Portland and their superb hospitality delayed my arrival, so I didn't get to Timberline Lodge until around 1:30pm; but it was all right, since my intentions were just to scout the mountain. It had been snowing for at least 36 hours; I put on my snowshoes and wandered around a bit. It was still snowing quite heavily and the ground was indistinguishable from the sky, the only visible things were wands marking the trail. The trail seemed to go on and on without any visible change for a while so I turned around at about 7100 feet.