Lookout Mountain

Saturday, October 17, 2020

Today we set out to hike up Lookout Mountain then take the Divide Trail over to Flag Point. There were four cars when we arrived at the High Prairie trailhead at 8:50. It was 48 degrees as we started hiking up the road-converted-to-trail:

Hiking to Lookout Mountain

Hiking to Lookout Mountain

Approaching the summit of Lookout Mountain:

Lookout Mountain

Wow, what a gorgeous day! Thanks to our early start we had the summit all to ourselves:

Lookout Mountain

Looking south there is Mt. Jefferson on the right and the Three Sisters barely visible on the left:

Three Sisters and Mt. Jefferson

Of course Mt. Hood is front and center:

Mt. Hood

Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams to the north:

Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier

Mt. St. Helens:

Mt. St. Helens

Looking east we could see the larches were just barely starting to turn, which was disappointing. We had hoped they would be more orange by this point:

Looking east

We descended from Lookout Mountain:

Lookout Mountain

Then we headed east on the Divide Trail:

Divide Trail

The trail steadily loses elevation as it heads east from Lookout Mountain:

Divide Trail

Divide Trail

Divide Trail

1.4 miles from Lookout Mountain we passed the junction with the Fret Creek Trail, then the trail climbed up to Palisade Point. We could see back to Lookout Mountain:

Lookout Mountain

At Palisade Point we stopped to take a break:

Palisade Point

Resting

There was a huge crazy-looking cloud overhead:

Big cloud

View of Flag Point from Palisade Point:

Flag Point

We decided to make this our turnaround spot instead of continuing on to Flag Point. On the way back towards Lookout Mountain we took a side trail to a nice view of Mt. Hood:

Mt. Hood view

Ascending the Divide Trail back up to Lookout Mountain:

Divide Trail

Looking back at that huge cloud:

Giant cloud

One last look to the east:

Looking east

Around Lookout Mountain there were A LOT of people, so we did not linger and kept heading west:

Descending Lookout Mountain

Instead of taking the old road back to the car we took the High Prairie Trail which passes several nice viewpoints of Mt. Hood:

Mt. Hood

Then we descended through the trees back to the car:

High Prairie Trail

High Prairie Trail

High Prairie Trail

Gaia stats: 6.6 miles, 1,400′ elevation gain