This past Sunday, a group of us and Rigby the Hiking Dog set off to the Mooney Crash site and Mooney Tarn from Cloud Cap Inn. The weather was perfect and provided us this view at our destination - the Mooney Tarn on the North side of Mt Hood:
We took the 9+ mile forest road up to Cloud Cap Inn - 4WD high clearance vehicle recommended, but not necessary. Our starting photo from the pay station at Cloud Cap Inn:
Please note this is an offtrail, and required two crossings of the Eliot Branch Crossing. The section of the Timberline trail crossing Eliot Branch Crossing is officially closed. The Eliot Branch Crossing was the crux of this adventure, more so in the afternoon when the water flow was greater.
From Cloud Cap Inn, one needs navigation to find the Eliot Crossing east side rope among a maze of user paths. East side rope descent to the Eliot Branch Crossing:
A few folks elected to jump over the rock crossing - note - this has risk, but is doable with dry rocks:
Rigby the Hiking Dog and I chose to head upstream on the east side and cross about 300 ft higher upstream, following the cairns. I forded Eliot, holding Rigby, about here:
With the first crossing behind us, we located the west side Eliot rope and headed up, doing our best to keep reasonable spacing, using the rope only for balance, keeping reasonable spacing. Still a risk since rocks can come tumbling down at any time:
I found the roped west side to be steeper and a longer path than the east side rope.
With Eliot behind us, we headed west on a very dusty Timberline trail and spied a few waterfalls along the way to our offtrail junction:
This was our offtrail junction from Timberline trail for the ascent, heading thru this meadow and gaining the ridge:
I was surprised to see a faint user path through this section. Gets more travel than I would have thought. We started on the west side of the ridge, crossed over the ridge here, following the faint path:
Then regained the ridge from the east side to avoid a rocky outcrop, Rigby following the user path:
The ridge then widened to a series of wonderful meadows, easy to travel through:
Past this very neat natural "sculpture":
..and then onto the final meadow before the Mooney Crash site. We must have missed the flower display here (~6400 ft elevation) by approximately 2 weeks:
Rigby was the first to reach the Mooney Crash site (~6600 ft elevation) - inspecting a wing from the site:
The previously snow-loaded fuselage:
We began the short bouldering ascent to the tarn. Note - these rocks are somewhat unstable, requiring constant vigilance. The path is moderately steep, but a straight-forward approx 100-ft scramble:
The landscape leveled out to the Mooney Tarn at approximately 6800ft elevation. It was about as pleasant as it looks:
Why not take a dip in 38F water? Cold!
By the way, where is the poolside menu?
A look at the tarn from above:
The green ridge in the lower left was the ascent ridge:
Looking down at the crash site from the tarn - smoke from Mt Adams to the north:
After about 50 minutes, we descended from the tarn and returned to the Timberline trail via a ridge 0.25 miles west of our ascent ridge. About 8/10 of a mile offtrail:
Almost back on the Timberline trail - we did our best to follow existing game paths during the offtrail:
Once back on the Timberline trail, we headed east to cross the Eliot again:
I forded the Eliot Branch Crossing about 400 ft further upstream than others so I could carry Rigby across. Thank you Helen for pairing with me to verify the crossing.
Rigby waits for proper spacing on the east side Eliot Crossing:
Our adventure culminated with a dusty return to Cloud Cap Inn by 5:30pm.
Distance: 7.3 miles
Ascent: approx 2400 ft ascent, roughly 1.5 miles of this was offtrail.
A grand adventure with perfect weather. Everyone returned safe.
My opinion: I don't recommend taking a small nor medium dog across the Eliot Branch Crossing. I don't think I will purposely take Rigby across that again - the risk is too high if I had fallen while fording the crossing.
gpsfly track: http://gpsfly.org/g/4704
)