On Sunday Greg and I did the short 4.2 mile round-trip hike up Hawk Mountain. This turned out to be a total gem of a hike!
At the trailhead I was pleasantly surprised to see a very new-looking trail sign made of sturdy plastic.
The trail immediately starts passing through fabulous beargrass meadows. Sadly we had missed the peak of the beargrass bloom here and they were looking a little fried. But we did see some nice Cascade Lilies.
Once we got a little bit higher we started seeing some patches that still looked good.
Once the trail entered the trees we crossed this strange bridge over a tiny creek. It’s kind of hard to tell from the picture but there were just lots of small logs and bark bits thrown down here and they were pretty compacted like it had all been here for awhile.
We skirted around the edge of Round Meadow.
Then we came to the well-signed junction with the Hawk Mountain Trail complete with old sign and spiffy new sign.
The summit of Hawk Mountain was pretty dang awesome with some mighty fine views of Mt. Jefferson. The light wasn’t the best for photography since it was the first part of the day, but we still enjoyed it immensely.
Olallie Butte:
Wildflowers:
There was once a fire lookout here. The lookout is gone although the ground cabin still stands. It was restored about 10 years ago but the hard winters have taken a toll on the place.
I went inside and had a look around. People do stay overnight here, although I think I would prefer a tent.
It was very very pleasant on the summit. I could have hung out there all day. There was a couple there when we arrived and they left shortly after, so we had the place to ourselves the rest of the time. Never saw another soul the rest of the hike. Eventually we tore ourselves away and headed back. We hadn’t been able to see Three Fingered Jack and the Three Sisters from the summit because of trees, but got a good look on the way down.
Final views before the last stretch to the car (although you do get one final view at the trailhead since you can look down the road right over to Mt. Jefferson):
If we had kept hiking MANY more miles north along the Rhododendron Ridge Trail we would have eventually gotten to Mt. Lowe. But we took the easy way and drove there via Road 4670 and then the short Road 220 spur. From there it was about a 15-minute hike to the summit of Mt. Lowe. A lookout was built here in 1932, but was torn down in the 1960s.
You can still see the stone steps on the right that used to lead to the door of the lookout.
The trees are growing up but you can see Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Hood.
The view to the west was unobstructed. The Bull of the Woods Wilderness might be on the far left of the second picture below, or maybe out of frame completely. I wish I had taken the time to get out the map and identify features when I was up there.
Looking southish:
We saw something weird that I’ve never seen at a lookout site before. There were these shallow rock pits that had rusty tin cans in them. These cans were quite old and I wondered if this area was once the trash heap from when the lookout still stood. One pit had what looked like an old stovepipe.
Then we began the LONG drive home (you get a sense for how big the Mt. Hood National Forest is when you drive from one end to the other in the same day). All in all a fantastic day with fabulous weather!
