My first snowshoe outing of the winter season was on President’s Day weekend to Wanoga Sno-Park, one of the closer snowy playgrounds to Bend, lauded for its family- and dog-friendly trails. Travel Oregon includes it on its list of “Top Wonderlands for Snowshoe Adventures.”

Up until last weekend, my Central Oregon snowshoeing experience was limited to Edison Butte Sno-Park, where I essentially cut my teeth in the sport by failing and learning how to use my snowshoes. I’ve had great experiences plodding along Edison Butte’s Tesla snowshoe trail, but in the interest of becoming acquainted with another of Oregon’s 100 sno-parks, I drove to Wanoga Sno-Park on Sunday, approximately 15 miles west of Bend on the Cascade Lakes Highway.

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Learning to embrace snowshoeing with a few failed starts along the way

Upon pulling into the sno-park parking lot, my friend and I found it dominated by snowmobiles, so looped around the lot and found a parking space in front of the warming shelter. From there, we headed back toward the main parking lot to connect with the trails.

However, the trails weren’t as well-marked as Edison Butte, and it was unclear exactly which one to take. Nevertheless, we strapped on our snowshoes and — along with another group of snowshoers — climbed up a path without any snowmobile tracks.

It was a beautiful, wide-open trail, nestled among the snow-dusted pine trees. After a period of time, the path took a slight right turn and met up with what seemed to be a snowmobile trail. We turned around and after noticing the other group take a smaller trail off into the trees, followed them along the trail that vaguely led north toward the parking lot.

The path was no wider than our snowshoes. I was nervous we might end up in the woods far away from our car, but trusted we were headed in the right direction. I was relieved to hear the sounds of playing children filtering through the trees as we neared the bottom of the hill.

Eventually, we emerged at the top of the Wanoga Snow Play Area, crawling with tobogganing families. Two children near us wailed after tumbling off of their sleds into the cold snow.

We hugged the side of the sledding hill, my dog, Juno, suddenly post holing in the deep snow, and safely trod back to our parking spot.

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Sno-park permits make accessibility to Oregon’s 100 parks possible

Note: A sno-park permit is required to access Wanoga Sno-park from Nov. 1-April 30. Annual sno-park permits cost $25, consecutive three-day permits cost $9 and single-day permits cost $4 and are available for purchase at DMV offices, winter resorts and sporting goods stores.

Getting there: From Bend, drive west on Cascade Lakes Highway approximately 15 miles. Signage will indicate where to turn left from the highway.