Despite a gloomy overcast morning on Saturday, Greg and I headed up to Larch Mountain to do the crater hike. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that we were above the clouds up there, and had a beautiful sunny day for a hike.
We started at the “trailhead” recommended by Sullivan, at the gate on the old logging road several miles before the mountain-top parking lot. We were the second car there, although there were ten others when we got back to the car after the hike.
We hiked clockwise, following the trail as it meandered through the forested crater. There are some big trees in there! It’s a nice forest with great ferns and lush green vegetation. (Although there are long stretches of trail that are very rooty and rocky and it makes for slow going.)
After finding a brand-new geocache (we were the first to find it!) along the trail, we continued on, climbing up, up, up out of the crater. We encountered very few people, but that changed, of course, when we arrived at the parking lot around 1:00. It was a bit of a zoo up there. It looked like a lot of people had come up for a picnic lunch. Amazingly enough, we had the viewpoint to ourselves for about 30 seconds shortly after we arrived. Sort of like the eye of the storm. But then more and more people arrived and it was crowded once again.
The views were pretty decent. Not as good as on a totally clear day, but still not bad. Low clouds hung in the Gorge and over the Bull Run Watershed, and the snowy volcanoes looked like they were floating in the air. Very cool.
The Washington peaks…
Mt. Hood…
And I had to test out the zoom on my new 18-105 lens (I was previously using Greg’s 18-75). NICE!
After eating lunch in the surprisingly hot sun at the viewpoint, we continued our loop hike back down to the old road and to our car. On this last stretch of trail we saw more hikers than we had before. One couple had hiked up from Multnomah Falls. And then we passed a guy who was carrying/rolling a rolling suitcase, the kind you would take as a carry-on. No matter how hard I try, I can’t come up with a plausible explanation for why anyone would be out there on a rocky trail with a wheeled suitcase. Bizarre!
Anyway, great hike and beautiful day. I’m glad I got my sunshine fix, because our Ramona Falls hike on Sunday was definitely not sunny, and in fact was rather wet!
