Saturday, May 28, 2021
It was another gorgeous day in the Ochocos and we woke up ready to hike Lookout Mountain.
We drove west and rather than park at the Round Mountain Trailhead right next to Road 42 we drove up bumpy Road 4205 to the Mother Lode Mine Trailhead. We started off on the Independent Mine Trail:
The first part of the trail follows an old roadbed:
We were pleased to see signs of very recent trail maintenance:
Passing through a hellebore meadow we could see Mt. Jefferson and the tip of Mt. Hood:
This was the first of MANY hellebore we saw on this hike:
Brown’s Peony:
One stretch of soggy trail:
False hellebore:
Some snow:
Crossing Brush Creek:
Reached the junction with the Line Butte Trail:
Last push to the summit:
Prairie smoke:
What a view!
Diamond Peak:
Mt. Bachelor and the Three Sisters:
Mt. Jefferson:
Mt. Hood:
Mt. Adams:
Old stone corral/fence:
Lookout remains:
This is the lookout that once stood here:
We sat and enjoyed the view for over an hour:
Before heading down on the second half of the loop we headed out towards North Point a little ways:
View of Round Mountain, which we would be hiking tomorrow:
After 0.7 miles the trail started to steeply descend, so we made this our turnaround point:
Looking back towards the summit where we took our break
We returned 0.7 miles back to the junction and headed downhill:
A short ways down the trail is the heavily-vandalized snow shelter, used by skiers in winter:
The trail descends down the mountain, staying mostly in the trees:
We encountered more snow on this trail than we had coming up:
Just before reaching the trailhead we passed below one of the remaining buildings from the old Mother Lode Mine:
We moved the car a little big down the road and headed down the short Baneberry Trail. There is a short loop hike with interpretive signs, but the first sign looked like this, so we didn’t bother doing the rest of the loop:
Instead we followed the old road down to the site of the old Independent Mine:
This is a pretty cool place to explore, with several old crumbling buildings:
After that we headed back to our campsite for dinner. The mosquitoes were out again so we had both the ThermaCell and the citronella candle going. Greg created a boot fortress to protect it from the wind:
That night was MUCH less cold than the previous night so we got up to stargaze:
