Journal

Another one of our favorite hikes on Mount Hood. We started at the crowded Top Spur Trailhead off of Lolo Pass Road. We’ve done parts of this hike before which included Bald Mountain. This time, though, we decided to extend the hike by adding a loop on the Timberline Trail down to Ramona Falls which essentially doubled the distance to over 12 miles.

There are two stream crossings on this trail, both of which are exciting. We look forward to having our trekking poles along next time!

This 12 mile hike (unplanned) also brought home how heavy traditional hiking boots are, step after step. Since then, we’ve both gotten light weight trail sneakers. We’ll save the boots for hikes when stornger ankle support is necessary.

The last part of the trail is part of the Pacific Coast Trail and we were passed by a group of three through-hikers who stopped to chat. They’d started months earlier at the trail head on the Mexico-California border and had another month to go to reach Canada. We were feeling pretty exhausted with only a couple of miles to go, but these three had another dozen miles to go before reaching their destination for the night. and were quickly out of sight on the switchbacks above us.

The meeting got us thinking about doing parts of the PCT ourselves… at least the ones in Oregon. Next summer, we’ll tackle portions of this again when we do the 40 mile hike around Mount Hood.