I like to camp in the snow. My wife, Janell, is OK with a bit of snowshoeing, but she’d rather camp by a lodge fireplace, watching the snow drift down past windows.
In recent years, we’ve compromised with a snowshoe trip at Odell Lake Lodge each winter. On the far side of Willamette Pass, this rustic resort dates to 1905 and still has the feel of a place time forgot. It costs nothing to snowshoe from the lodge 1.2 miles around the lake to a viewpoint at Chinquapin Point.
After a trek like that, however, it would be hard not to order a cup of hot cocoa and put your feet up in front of the lodge’s fire. If you don’t have snowshoes, you can easily rent a pair at the lodge. If you spend the night, you can use their snowshoes or Nordic skis for free.
Odell Lake Lodge has a dozen rental cabins that seem popular, even though people have to park their cars at the lodge and carry their stuff up a hill. Janell and I prefer the seven rooms upstairs. They rent for as little as $100 and give you the run of the lodge after 8 pm, when the outside doors lock.
This is a place where the woman at the front desk often doubles as the waitress in the dining room, and, after taking your order, goes back to the kitchen to cook it. For the past 15 years, that woman’s name has been Vonda.
No one is a stranger to Vonda for long. She likes to talk. Before taking your order, you are likely to learn about her 10 siblings, her aching hip and her husband’s plan to retire in Michigan. Janell loves this kind of chat. When I’m in a café, I’m hungry. Fortunately, Vonda is also a really good cook. Her $10 French toast breakfast lasts you all day. The lasagna is first-rate. If you want a veggie garden burger with bonus bacon, Vonda doesn’t bat an eye.
Before you get the cocoa, however, you should earn it with the snowshoe trip. Start by driving Highway 58 east of Willamette Pass 5.5 miles. At the far end of Odell Lake, turn right at a sign for East Odell Lake and follow the plowed road half a mile to a parking area beside the lodge.
Put your snowshoes on at the lodge and walk back toward the highway 200 feet. After crossing the road bridge over Odell Creek, turn left on a lakeshore path through a snowed-under campground, following blue diamond-shaped markers.
Odell Lake looks different every time you take this trip. Sometimes it’s a silent, frozen sheet of white. Other days, crunching icebergs jam the shore. Often, the lake is not frozen at all, and west winds pile up waves into a noisy surf.
After following the lakeshore counter-clockwise for a mile, the trail forks. The path to the left follows the shore to an OK viewpoint. But the view is better if you take the right-hand fork up to the snowed-under Sunset Bay Picnic Area. From there, you can make your way out to the top of Chinquapin Point.
Ponderosa pines frame this lakeside bluff. Bring binoculars to watch bald eagles swoop over the water, hunting bufflehead ducks. On the far shore, Lakeview Mountain rises above the lodge’s forest. Diamond Peak looms to the right, a long white ridge.
No matter what you brought as a snack, you will now begin thinking about a steaming mug of cocoa in front of a crackling pine fire in the lodge’s lobby. Or perhaps a full-scale meal on the massive wood tables of the knotty-pine-paneled dining room, where snow-drifted windows look out across the lake.
When we last stayed at Odell Lake Lodge, Vonda was training a younger woman. I don’t know if Vonda will ever really retire, but even so, I bet she’ll have taught her replacement to cook, chat and not bat an eye if you order a garden burger with bacon.
William L. Sullivan is the author of 23 books, including The Ship In The Woods and the updated 100 Hikes Series For Oregon. Learn more at OregonHiking.com.