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:
Approaching the summit of Lookout Mountain:
Wow, what a gorgeous day! Thanks to our early start we had the summit all to ourselves:
Looking south there is Mt. Jefferson on the right and the Three Sisters barely visible on the left:
Of course Mt. Hood is front and center:
Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams to the north:
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:
We descended from Lookout Mountain:
Then we headed east on the Divide Trail:
The trail steadily loses elevation as it heads east from Lookout Mountain:
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:
At Palisade Point we stopped to take a break:
There was a huge crazy-looking cloud overhead:
View of Flag Point from Palisade 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:
Ascending the Divide Trail back up to Lookout Mountain:
Looking back at that huge cloud:
One last look to the east:
Around Lookout Mountain there were A LOT of people, so we did not linger and kept heading west:
Instead of taking the old road back to the car we took the High Prairie Trail which passes several nice viewpoints of Mt. Hood:
Then we descended through the trees back to the car:
Gaia stats: 6.6 miles, 1,400′ elevation gain
