Our first trip to Oregon - Mount Hood and Hood River, OR

Labor Day weekend was new to us. I actually had labor day off! I didn't usually take Labor Day as a holiday in grad school. We hadn't visited Oregon since we moved to the NW and we wanted to get some hiking in. We were a little wary that it would be hard to find a camp site, so we didn't go out until Saturday morning. I guess that was also due to the fact that K-State also played on Friday night. We had to stop in the town of Hood River, OR and pick up a Northwest National Forest Pass so that we could park and hike in the area. The town was so cute, and we were excited to come back on Sunday and check it out!

Chase found a cool hike on a Portland hikers website (Mount Hood is pretty close to Portland). We had a little bit of trouble finding the trailhead at first because it turns out the name of our hike was actually a few different paths combined to make a round-trip hike. Luckily the website had a lot of details about the trails, so we were able to find our way quite easily. A little ways up from the trailhead, we turned left onto the Umbrella Falls Trail. After about a 2 mile jaunt in and out of the forest and meadows, we made it to Umbrella Falls. Very pretty!

As we continued along the trail through the meadows, ever once in awhile Mount Hood would pop out and say hello! We could really see the glaciers! Since we decided to take the meadows hike, it was similar to Mt. Rainier with flowers and a glacier mountain in the background! 

There were lots of little streams and creeks along the trail. They were all really cold since they were snow melt. The prettiest flowers grew by the streams though. We stopped at the first one and had a little snack! In the last picture, you can see Mount Hood in the background.

We were on the southeast side of the mountain, so the view to the south was expansive and full of evergreens and meadows. About halfway through the hike, we came out of the forest and into a meadow and the view to the south had snow covered mountain tops! We were surprised by this because we didn't know there were over 10K mountain tops south of Mount Hood that we would be able to see! I head from a friend that lives in the area that they are called the Three Sisters. I only remembered seeing two, maybe the third one was hidden. Only one was close enough for pictures.

From here the hike turned a corner and we were up at the top of a canyon with a fast flowing creek at the bottom, I guess you could say. One side was forest and one side was a moraine. Chase and I didn't really know what a moraine was until we looked it up on the way home. It is an ice formed accumulation of glacial debris (soil and rock).

We headed down into the canyon and came across tons of little creeks and waterfalls. The first medium sized creek that we had to cross was really scary! There were logs (I think they should really be classified as sticks though) across the creek, so you didn't have to get wet. The kicker though is that we crossed about 10 feet above a 30ish foot waterfall. Yeah. I was a bit scared...We made it across and continued down the canyon to the beautiful views of Mount Hood and Clark Creek, the fast flowing larger glacial creek.

Far away view of the falls we crossed

View up river (I was stalling...)

I think Chase has felt the water in each glacial creek we've ever encountered...it's always cold...

View from below the falls we crossed just above

Once we got down to the bottom of the canyon (I guess I'm not sure if it's really a canyon...but that's what I've decided to call it), we had some great views of the mountain and the glaciers!

Although I could see Clark Creek looming below us for quite sometime down the canyon, I was still scared when we got there to cross it. It was flowing really fast and to top it all off it was cloudy. The glacier sediment flows right into the creek and makes the larger creeks cloudy all the way down the mountain. It was even cloudy by our campsite at the much larger east fork of the Hood River. We had to cross though to continue the trail. We scouted out the best spot for probably about 10 minutes. We finally realized that they were all bad since we couldn't see what was in the water. We finally decided to get our feet wet and stuck our trekking poll in the water and dug in. The water was rushing so fast that you really had to shove the trekking poll in the sand to get good traction. But we made it. It was actually pretty painless, but rushing glacial creeks make me nervous since there are so many warnings about them. The biggest problem is that the nature of the creek can change so fast. When the snow first starts to melt in the spring they rush extremely fast and they can start to rush very quickly if bad weather rolls into the mountains! Eek!

We finished the hike pretty easily after crossing the river and climbing out of the canyon. It was pretty much downhill the rest of the way. Pretty views of Mount Hood and some diseased trees called ghost trees.

After we finished our ~9.5 mile hike, we headed back down the road to find a campsite. We were a little concerned about finding something since it was Labor Day weekend. We knew that when we drove past Saturday morning that the campground closer to the road was pretty empty, but we wanted to try and stay at the one closer to the river! All of the campgrounds are first come first serve. We did manage to get one of the last spots at the Nottingham campground by the river, but it was a pretty crappy spot. It was still pretty early and we weren't planning to build a fire because its so dry here, to dangerous in our opinion! We packed up and left so fast that we didn't bring a ton of food to cook and we were really hungry after our hike. Thus, we took a little drive down to a little town called Parkville to get some gatorade and Doritos. Chase and I always have Doritos when we car camp. It's the only time we ever eat them, so it is fun. The next morning we got up and headed back to Hood River to find yummy breakfast food and check out the town! We decided we wanted to explore a few orchards along the Fruit Loop. There are so many orchards and wineries in Hood River that they have a route you can follow to hit like 30ish different spots. Maybe some day we'll go back and bike along the loop and stop at all the wineries of course :) We only stopped at one orchard since it was so early. We went to Mt. View Orchards mostly because they said they were open at 9 AM on Sundays. There wasn't anyone there at first, so it was just help yourself on the honor system. We looked around for a long time, so by the time we were leaving the owner, Ruthie came up. Very nice lady. I think we'll go back again next year! We got about 20 lbs of pears that we canned and some apples for apple pie. Yum!

We still hadn't really checked out the downtown part of Hood River. It was kind of a mess to drive down there because everything was 4-way stops and there were people everywhere! We wanted to go down to the river and find a beach. Once we headed that way we realized why all the people were there. There was some sort of wind and kite surfing competition going on. It was so cool to watch! We crossed a small patch of water and headed onto the sandbar to watch people surfing. I don't think I could do it. It looked really difficult.

View toward the Columbia River Gorge

Sandbar and other direction on the river

Someone trying to get their kite ready for surfing!

Kite Surfing!

Downtown Hood River

Poor picture, cool jump!

I got in the water too! I hate cold water!

Beautiful!

Our last stop of the trip was to the Full Sail tasting room and pub. It was only like 11 AM and we still had a two hour drive home, so we didn't have food or taste any beer. Even so we wanted to stop by and buy some beer. We first had Full Sail at a tasting event at the West Richland Beer and Wine Shop. Pretty cool little shop. We actually went there in hopes of buying some local brewery pint glasses as part of the groomsmen gift at our wedding. They didn't have any to sell, but there was the tasting event going on and we ended up winning 5 pint glasses in the raffle! It was fun!

We really enjoyed Hood River. They have a train that goes up into the mountains. I really want to ride! Chase's parents are coming at the end of the month. I think we are going to take them to Hood River and hopefully ride the train!