Sunday, July 15, 2018
Greg and I decided to hike to Paradise Park today.
I was camped up at Mt. Hood and Greg drove up this morning to join me at Timberline Lodge. Even at the early hour of 7:30am it was already pretty warm. Here is Mt. Hood from the parking lot:
Hiking up to the TImberline Trail:
We had a nice view of Mt. Jefferson beyond Timberline Lodge on this clear day:
We didn’t see many people on the trail and it was nice and quiet:
We reached the rim of Zigzag Canyon and peered in before making the long descent to the bottom:
We saw some nice wildflowers along the way as we switchbacked down to the river:
We’ve reached the bottom! Now we have to climb back out again:
Mt. Jefferson again:
Look at all that beargrass!
In the distance, clouds were starting to build up around Mt. Jefferson:
These meadows will be full of lupine in a week or two. We were too early:
The western pasque flower was just getting started:
We sat down by Lost Creek and boy did it feel nice there. The day was getting quite hot:
An American Dipper kept us company:
This is such a lovely spot (except for the biting flies):
After hanging out by the creek for a few hours, we finally started hiking back. We could see the clouds spreading out and getting closer:
Good and cloudy now:
A lot of trees fell last winter. We saw evidence of recent work to get them cleared and most have been taken care of, but these hadn’t yet been dealt with. This was between Zigzag Canyon and the Paradise Park loop:
Descending into Zigzag Canyon:
Crossing the Zigzag:
At the top of the canyon:
Once you climb out of Zigzag Canyon you still have more than two miles and several hundred feet of elevation to gain before reaching the lodge. It was a long uphill trudge in the heat:
The Little Zigzag River had been dry in the morning, but was now flowing. It was very silty:
We’re back!
We knew the lodge would be crawling with tourists so we went to Mt. Hood Brewing in Government Camp instead:
It was a long hot day, 10.5+ miles and 2400′ elevation gain. But beautiful! I’m cherishing these beautiful blue skies because any day now wildfires will fill the sky with smoke and haze for the rest of summer.
