Every hike is a new journey, one whose outcome, even if you’ve traveled the route many times and know its terrain almost as intimately as your backyard, can’t be known for certain.

Nothing, though, refreshes the scene, and renders the familiar just a trifle unsettling in its diversion from the typical, quite so well as a fresh fall of snow.

Better still if the flakes are flying thickly, trying with your every stride to erase the evidence of your presence, much as the birds did for Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breadcrumbs.

There was little risk that my wife, Lisa, and I would misplace the trail along the north side of Phillips Reservoir on the snowy afternoon of Dec. 10.

Yet the falling snow, which thickened considerably as we walked, both in the volume of flakes and their average size, added an air of wildness to what is a pretty civilized excursion.

Snow, among its many attributes, also muffles sound. And so the hum of traffic on Highway 7 — a much more heavily traveled route than you’ll find in the real hinterlands — didn’t significantly intrude on the experience even though the trail never strays more than a quarter mile or so from the two-lane blacktop.

The shoreline trail is among the more accessible winter hikes near Baker City.

(There are trails on both the north and south sides of the reservoir, which is in the Sumpter Valley about 17 miles southwest of Baker City, but the road to the north trail is more reliably plowed. The views of the Elkhorn Mountains are much better from the south side, but this was irrelevant on a day when the snow flew and tendrils of fog were draped on the hills.)

The trail starts along the road leading to the Mason Dam boat ramp, which is along the reservoir just above the dam.

This road, which descends for a quarter mile or so from Highway 7, usually is plowed during the winter, a boon for anglers who drill holes in the ice to fish for trout and yellow perch.

There was no ice to drill on Dec. 10.

But there was snow.

And if I may belabor the fairy tale analogies, the conditions were of the Goldilocks variety.

There was enough snow to thoroughly cover the trail and transform the ponderosa pine forest into something quite different from what you see in balmier seasons.

But the snow was of modest depth — perhaps 4 inches at most — so snowshoes were superfluous.

Even the consistency of the snow seemed to me ideal for hiking. It wasn’t the feathery powder that skiers covet but neither was it the soggy slush that can make the “waterproof” boasts of the bootmakers seem a cruel lie. The snow didn’t greatly impede our progress but there was enough moisture that with each step the rubber sole got a solid grip.

It was the sort of snow that lends itself to snowballs.

Although I suspect assembling anything larger — a snowman, for instance — would have been a tougher task, as the snow was slightly too light for that sort of construction.

Anyway it was quite pleasant to hike the snowy trail.

Most of the snow had fallen over the previous 12 hours or so — recently enough that even the usual forest pathways made by squirrel and bird and hare were almost absent.

We found a few spots where a deer had gone, but those tracks were about half filled with snow.

Few trails in our region, with its rumpled topography, offer an easier walk than the shoreline trail. There are no severe grades — indeed, few grades of even modest proportions.

But the lay of the land isn’t lacking in interesting folds and slopes. This is no plain.

The trail, as any path must if it is to remain relatively level while traversing uneven terrain, veers into a few minor draws in the 2-mile section we hiked from the boat ramp road to the eastern edge of Union Creek Campground.

(The campground is closed for the season but hikers, snowshoers and cross-country skiers can travel through.)

The scene isn’t so stark as it has been for the previous three years, when drought severely depleted the reservoir, leaving a sort of bathtub ring around the shoreline (albeit a ring hundreds of feet wide, which would tax even those heavily advertised concoctions with their scrubbing bubbles and whatnot).

As 2023 wanes, the reservoir is about one-third full. The water level, though, is still well below and distant from the trail.

The forest here is a classic second-growth ponderosa stand.

The old growth pines were logged early in the 20th century and hauled to a mill in south Baker City by the Sumpter Valley Railroad — the famed steam-powered Stump Dodger of lore.

Most of the trees now are younger than about 75 years.

But the Forest Service, through a combination of cutting trees and lighting prescribed fires in the spring, is urging the forest back toward that historical setting of widely spaced, thick-barked ponderosas.

At 53, I doubt I’ll see this forest reach that stage, something that saddens me more than it ought to.

But even these comparatively young pines are quite fetching during winter, when the snow accentuates the ponderosas’ distinctive bark, a unique shade that incorporates red, brown and orange among other hues.

Perhaps my favorite winter tableau is a snowbound ponderosa stand on a clear day, when the blue sky adds a third rich color to the scene.

Our views were dull by comparison.

But with the snow and the low cloud deck limiting the vista, I focused on sites much closer to the trail.

I noticed the young shoots thrusting between the decadent old branches of bitterbrush, invigorated by the prescribed fire that swept through these woods in April 2021.

I was a trifle disappointed not to see deer munching on these nutritious shrubs, a key source of winter feed.

The flames two years ago blackened the bark on the lower trunks of many pines, but this is superficial and poses no risk to these trees with their thick plates of bark. Fire actually helps to prune the lower branches, a protective adaptation that deprives wildfires of a ladder they can climb into the pines’ vulnerable crowns.

(Prescribed fire also topples other rungs of this ladder, including thickets of young trees that, besides posing a fire risk, can stunt the growth of larger trees by leaching some of the limited supplies of water and nutrients from the soil.)

Mature ponderosas typically lack limbs 30 or more feet above ground. This, combined with the generous spacing between trees typical of an old-growth stand, means a crown fire — the type that can destroy any type of forest — is unlikely.

I suspect the next time we hike this way the snow will be deep enough to warrant snowshoes.

I’m sure I’ll enjoy that journey, too.

But I relished the chance to make the first tracks, clad in plain boots unencumbered by useful but clumsy plastic contraptions, on a trail through the pines.

The shoreline trail isn’t heavily traveled during winter, to be sure.

Yet the forest dwellers, who know nothing of weekends or of sleeping in late, go busily about their business of survival, and even newfallen snow does not long remain pristine.

I quite like being out in the storm, leaving as signs of my presence only impressions in the snow, and those soon neatly erased.

If You Go

The north shoreline trail at Phillips Reservoir starts beside the Mason Dam boat ramp access road.

From Baker City, drive Highway 7 south and then west toward Sumpter.

Between Mileposts 35 and 34 (the numbers get lower the farther from Baker City), and just at the top of the grade next to Mason Dam, turn left onto the access road for the Mason Damp boat ramp. There’s ample parking.

The shoreline trail starts just above the restroom. There is no fee to park or to use the trail.

The south shoreline trail starts at the south end of the road that crosses Mason Dam. To get there, turn left onto Black Mountain Road, about halfway up the grade and less than a quarter mile before the boat ramp road turnoff. Black Mountain Road isn’t always plowed, however.