Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Because I had to work on Saturday I had today off and it fortunately turned out to be a beautiful day for a hike. So I headed up to the Boulder Lake Trailhead to do the Boulder Lake loop with a side trip to Bonney Butte.
I set off up the trail and quickly passed Spinning Lake:
Then I reached Boulder Lake, which is a very popular place to camp, but which was nice and quiet today:
I turned south and soon passed Little Boulder Lake:
After Little Boulder Lake a bit of road-walking on Road 123 is required. I saw some very nice fall color:
I even saw a few larches, which aren’t that common around here:
I picked up the Forest Creek Trail and headed north:
There’s a spot where you can looking down on Boulder Lake. That’s Grasshopper Point beyond:
There were a few larches down there turning color:
Further along is another viewpoint called Echo Point. That’s Badger Butte, right of center:
Then I reached Bonney Meadows where I had a view of the top of Mt. Hood:
I walked through Bonney Meadows Campground:
Then I turned north on Road 4891 until I reached the old gated spur road up to Bonney Butte and turned left. (People can, and do, drive 4891 but it’s unmaintained and ROUGH.) Just before reaching the summit I got a view of Mt. Jefferson to the south:
From the top there are great views of Mt. Hood:
Fall color down along the White River:
Every fall HawkWatch International has people stationed up here during the raptor migration to count and band birds. They have a board where you can see what they’ve done so far this year:
After lingering on the summit for awhile I hiked back down. View of Bonney Meadows:
I retraced my steps back to the campground and picked up the Boulder Lake Trail, which descends in a loop back down to Boulder Lake. More fall color:
Back at Boulder Lake:
This tree along road 4880 near the trailhead looked brilliant!
This turned out to be a really awesome fall hike. I had hiked here before, but that was in summer. Total for the day: 9.1 miles, 1300′ elevation gain.
