Timberline Trail: Days 3 and 4!

-----Day 3, July 31st-----

On day 3 we continued our clockwise traverse of Mount Hood! We had A LOT of downed trees in our path on this  particular morning. It was a little frustrating and monotonous, yet still beautiful with the summit poking out from behind the burnt trees.

 After about a mile we came upon Coe Branch Creek. This creek is listed as the second hardest creek to cross on trail. It turned out to not be that bad! We walked upstream for a while and found an area where the river narrowed drastically, resulting in a very fast rush of water between two rocks. 

There seemed to be a log crossing that had been washed out. I leaped across the rocks with my go-go-gadget legs, and I found a long branch nearby to re-build the crossing! 

Not as sturdy as it probably once was, but I felt pretty accomplished and happy that I could benefit future hikers. (At least until the afternoon, when the swollen river will probably deconstruct my bridge.)

We had a BEAUTIFUL next four miles.. Small waterfalls were flowing in every little valley that we crossed in and out of. Beautiful wildflowers and views of Mt. Adams at our backs while we continued on the perfect day! 

Eventually we approached the Elliot Branch Creek. Way back in November 2006, the Elliot Glacier experienced a huge washout that created a few landslides and completely wiped out the trail crossing. Since then the trail has technically be "indefinitely closed", yet many hikers still scramble down a steep 300 ft slide area with the help of a precarious rope left by other hikers, and cross the sometimes dangerous creek, to complete the Timberline circuit hike. 

I did not take and do not own the picture below. It is a good visual and reference of the current trail condition: 

When we stopped to buy the map on the way up to Timberline Lodge, I had asked the employee there about any current information on the crossing, as most online information about the matter is very outdated. He told me he had been across a few days earlier, and said we should have no problem crossing based on our recent 900+ miles on the PCT.

All pictures in the remainder of this blog entry are originals taken by myself:

Looking down towards the washout. If you look very closely on the middle right side of the picture, you can see the faint "trail" that we would be using to exit the valley on the other side.

Our nearly vertical rope descent.

And our descending view.

Claire at the bottom of the rope, there was about 100 feet or so no-rope section down past where I was standing for this shot.

The actual river crossing was not that bad. We just had to get our feet wet :)

Scrambling up the ther side looking back into the valley.

After climbing out of the valley and finding the trail again, we ascended up towards Cooper Spur. The East side of Mt. Hood is very arid and hot, with a lot of the trail consisting of barren landscapes. 

In the next few miles we climbed way up high and crossed about 6 or 7 snow patches. When we hit the very top of Lamberson Spur, we took a victory mountain selfie at the highest point on the Timberline trail at 7,300 ft. On the way down, I even got to glissade down a snow chute!

After descending out of the snow, we continued to descend down Gnarl Ridge and to loop around Lamberson Butte. The wildflowers returned in full force, and we continued to be rewarded with awesome views!

After a looooong descent, we did a wet crossing of Newton Creek, our final crossing of the day. There were some occupied campsites just after the river, but some nice people told us about a vacant site tucked away a few hundred feet up the hill in the trees. It was still early in the evening, but after a long climb and decent, and a few difficult river crossings over 11 miles, we were ready for some rest!

-----Day 4, August 1st-----

On the morning of our 4th day we made our way towards Mt. Hood Meadows, the place where Claire and I snowboard and ski in the winter. There were beautiful flowers and waterfalls left and right! (This has been a recurring theme on this hike :)

It was really crazy to walk through some of the same ski runs that I'm usually boarding down in 5+ feet of snow! 

See the chair lift in the back?

After a short food break and a picture perfect photo session with somw purple wildflowers and Mt. Jefferson, we were already leaving Mt. Hood Meadows ski resort. 

We started a long descent down to White  River. Again, the crossing was not difficult but approaching and leaving the river valley was very tiring and strenuous. This picture is looking back down at the huge sandy ravine:

The day was hot, the sand was deep, the grade was steep, and we trudged up a giant hill for the last few miles of our hike! The trail was a few feet from a very high and vertical drop to our right. At one point I felt the ground shake and heard a great noise nearby made from the dislodging of a few big boulders. They crashed down the sandy cliffs, making a big cloud of dust not 30 feet away from where I stood!

Soon we could see the Timberline Lodge, our starting point!!

Although we had only done 6.8 miles on this last day, we had to go celebrate our trip of 40+ miles in just 72 hours around our favorite mountain! We stopped by El Burro Loco on the way back down towards town, and you BET we got the nachos! :) 

It was definitely a very fun trip. A little more physically challenging than I thought it would be for some reason, butt assume it's just because our bodies finally got used to NOT walking 17-20 miles a day like on the PCT! 

I appreciate everyone who is still following this blog and is checking out what we're up to. I don't have to be making these, but the great feeling I get from people telling me how inspired they are and the appreciation of the photos I post make me strive to keep producing new material about our trips! Feel free to leave me some comments or questions and I'll make sure to continue posting our summer adventures! Until next time! And as always,

Thanks for reading!!