Up the Mountain to Mt. Hood

For all the years we spent visiting Hood River, I have never made the hour long drive to Mt. Hood.  Amazing.  I'll let the pictures help me tell the story.

The stunning scenery only begins on the drive up.  Here is all 12,000+ feet of the mountain as we were approaching it.

The historic Timberline Lodge was built in the 1930's.  Definitely out of our budget, but like the bunches of other tourists at Mt. Hood that day we went in to admire how nice it is.

I took a little hike in the snow, while Chad went much farther up the mountain (to the mid chair station at 7000 feet) and ran/boot skied down.  It was great to be out on a hot summer day (probably 25 degrees Celsius) and wearing shorts and tank top!

While Chad went adventuring further up the mountain, I found some new friends and had a beer.  I think they thought I was hardcore because of my boots - little did they know I was only sitting on the patio because I didn't want to go any further up with Chad.

We camped at Trillium Lake, which has stunning sunset views of the mountain.

A little more rustic than our previous sites - no showers or wifi here!

The guys we met at Mt. Hood suggested a hike at Ramona Falls, about 20 miles west, which we did the next day.

This is the Sandy River, which obviously gets a lot higher than it is now.  Many signs of this being a major debris chute - in fact, it appears the whole valley gets flooded with water & mud when the glaciers/snow at Mt. Hood decide to really let go.

Part of the trail picks up the Pacific Crest Trail (or as all the locals call it, the PCT).  This is the western (and more hard core) version of the better known Appalachian Trail in the eastern US, and runs from Mexico to Canada.  Somehow, I don't think the 10 minutes we spent on it qualify us as hardy PCTers.

This wasn't a particularly difficult hike, and the falls at the end were totally worth it - water streaming over moss covered basalt.

More of the parched Sandy River on the way down.

And after a hard day's hike, what's better than... a beer?  Mt. Hood Brewing Company had tasty brews and a nice patio on which to partake.

Dinner

Breakfast

It is fair to say we dined like kings, thanks to Chad's cooking.  Shots of me dishwashing are not quite as glamourous, and thus didn't make the cut.