[/caption] There is a very short and scenic snow-shoe trail that will take you to one of the most scenic and beautiful spots to view Mt. Hood. The trail is right off Hwy 26 and within an earshot from the chairlifts of Mt. Hood Ski Bowl. You can see the condos and lodges in Government Camp as well as hear the groomers plowing along the groomed runs of the ski resort. The Summit trail starts near the ski bowls west parking lot and ends at the Mazama sno-park. However, the lakes are right between the two chairlifts at Mt. Hood Ski Bowl. As long as there is enough snow covering the two small lakes you can gingerly snow-shoe along their banks or even navigate your way through them. The day I visited it had snowed over 2 feet of cold champagne powder the night before and I was the first to visit since the snow had fallen. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the conditions were epic. However, the high winds were whipping the snow from the trees which made it seem as though it was snowing at times. I was using my Canon EOS T1i along with my Tamron 12-24 wide angle lens. I had the focal length at 24mm in order to add as much of the mountain to this shot as possible. I also wanted to get the small branch in the foreground as well as frame the mountain with trees on both sides. The lake is in the foreground and you can almost make out the creek carving its way through the snow. I wanted to increase the field of view as much as possible so I kept the ISO at 100 and the white balance to -0.3. I took this shot on 2/25/11 and it was about 11:30am so the sun was somewhat bright but still low enough to create shadows from the tall trees. The camera mode was at Program/Normal mode so the aperture was at F-10 and the Exposure Time was 1/200 second. I was using my warming filter and CIR-PL to highlight the mountain but calm the intensity of the sun drenched blue sky. The warming filter also helped eliminate too much glare from the snow. I highly recommend using both of these filters whenever photographing in snow during a sunny day.