| Date | Distance | Time | Elevation Gain | Average Moving Time | Year to Date Miles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 08/20/2018 | 7.5 miles | 4 hours 16 minutes | 1,228' | 28:15 |
Map: Pick up when you pay for parking
Parking: See book. $9 parking fee.
Directions: 100 Hikes / Travel Guide, Northwest Oregon & Southwest Washington. Hike #74 Lost Lake (to Lost Lake Butte, also around Lost Lake)
Today was a hazy, smoky day with a chance of an afternoon thunderstorm. I'm not keen on hiking in thunderstorms, plus there was a lot of smoke in the air, so we decided to do short hikes today. Our first hike was to Lost Lake Butte. We picked up a map when we paid for parking. Our Mount Hood map doesn't cover this hike. The park map was really helpful. Our book has a rough map. We also downloaded maps for the area on Gaia GPS (an app). But, the park maps were much more detailed. After paying for parking, we turned left onto a road and parked. Studied the map to figure out where we were and how to get to our hike. This really wasn't the optimal place to park for our hike, lol. We started walking on some trails (a confusing mess of them) through campground areas, heading towards the trailhead. Once we got to the trailhead, the hike is straightforward.
There were switchbacks up the rocky trail to the summit. There were no views at all due to the smoke and haze. We didn't see many people on this hike. We went back down to the parking area. I just decided this hike was good exercise. Sometimes when a hike isn't exciting, it comes to that.
From there we made our way over to the boat launch area and walked clockwise around Lost Lake. This is a really easy hike. Oh boy. There were soooo many people. That meant trash. On the west side of the lake were boardwalks. The east side was a more rocky trail. The highlight of the hike was a spot on the east side where we watched fish jumping from the water. We sat for a long time watching them. There is supposed to be a famous view of Mount Hood from Lost Lake, but today we got nothing due to the smoke. Lots of people were in the water - SUP'ing, kayaking, rowboating, tubing, swimming. Many dogs in the water as well.
I wouldn't do this hike again - there are really nice Mount Hood views in more isolated places.
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| From the parking area, we started here, which leads through campgrounds |
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| Reaching the actual trailhead |
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| Forested trail |
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| View from Lost Lake Butte - smoke and haze |
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| Walking around Lost Lake |
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| We ran into Sasquatch! |
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