Sunday, May 30, 2021
Today we hiked up Round Mountain, which is right next door to Lookout Mountain.
On a previous visit we drove the rough road to the top, but it was cloudy that day and we didn’t have many views. We started at the Round Mountain Trailhead, followed the trail to where it crossed, the road, and started climbing:
We passed this old mining pond:
At 1.5 miles we reached this nice little meadow:
Wild onion bloomed here:
Lomatium:
From that point we lost elevation. Along the way we got a peek at Round Mountain, which seemed depressingly far away:
After losing 300 feet we crossed Road 150 at 2.2 miles:
We started climbing again. A break in the trees provided a view to the west:
The trail was pleasant, passing through grassy meadows and ponderosas:
We saw some wildflowers along the way:
We started seeing a lot of false hellebore:
Looks like some kind of slump or landslide:
As we neared the top we got a nice view of Big Summit Prairie:
The trail pops out onto the road and the last stretch to the summit is a road hike:
The summit had a fire lookout once:
Now there is just a communications tower and a pretty nice view:
Like yesterday at Lookout Mountain our view included all the snowy Cascade volcanoes from Diamond Peak to Mt. Adams:
Mt. Pisgah:
Big Summit Prairie:
Lookout mountain:
The road is popular with OHVs, some of which arrived while we were sitting there taking our break. One of the guys saw us with our packs and poles (and no vehicle in sight) and said “You guys WALKED up here???” His tone was not “wow, that’s impressive” it was more like “wow, you’re insane.”
There were some ladybugs congregating on the rocks:
The previous OHVs left, then more arrived. Break over, we started heading down:
We ran into some mountain bikers just coming up the trail on the other side, from Walton Lake. They planned to go down the trail we had come up, then go up and over Lookout Mountain. Intense! Then a convoy of six OHVs passed us, heading up to the summit. Sheesh. Good thing we left when we did.
We hiked back down the same way we came up. Gaia stats: 10 miles, 1,900′ elevation gain.
We had another lovely evening at our campsite:
Mother Nature treated us to a beautiful sunset on our last night:
