Five of us drove down from the Tri-Cities for our first hike on Dog Mountain. I researched the trail on the internet and tried to find trip reports for this year. No trip reports yet though this year so I figured it was because few people were hiking it this early. I figured there might be some snow at the summit.
For the first half of the trail, we were enjoying a nice spring hike. Then we started to get into a little snow. We took the easier right hand trail because someone had etched ""better views"" or something like that in the sign. By the time we exited the trees into what is probably a beautiful meadow of flowers in May, we were walking through several inches of snow and getting pounded by the wind. Probably 3/4 of the way up we reached the old outlook site (""Puppy"" I think it's called). The wind was really blowing and we were in the clouds.
We reached the summit where some trees provided great cover from the wind and the sun was breaking through the cloud cover. There were snow drifts of a couple feet and maybe 6"" of cover in most places. We got a few good views of the Columbia river a few times when the clouds weren't in the way.
A great hike. Very glad we wore many layers, gloves and hats! We'll come back later in the spring to check out the hills without the snow.
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