We set out from the Vista Ridge trail head at about 9:15 & made our way up to the Timberline trail. Our plan was hike hike East on the Timberline trail cross Coe Creek then head up the ridge described by Thomas & Fred to the crash site. We were also armed with a set of coordinates supplied by Thomas.
It was a beautiful day on the mountain and our progress was slowed by the number of photos we kept stopping to take! This is what Elk Cove looked like.
From here it was on to Coe Creek where we found the water level to be quite low, 2 of us took the log bridge & 3 jumped!
I can report that a lot of trail maintenance has recently been done on the Timberline trail east of Elk Cove & East of Coe Creek. Down & overhanging trees have been removed and the bench recut on just about the whole climb up from the Coe on the East side.
We continued East until we felt we were at the point described by Thomas & Fred, the GPS told us we were about half a mile from the crash site so we left the trail & began to climb up the ridge. It wasn't long before we realized our mistake - we had come up the wrong ridge & now found ourselves in the middle of the Coe & its Eastern branch! The photo below shows us only 0.2 miles away from our goal but with a gaping chasm between it & us!!
Nobody wanted to go back down to the Timberline & climb up again so we opted to keep going up the ridge we were on & see if we could cross over to the correct ridge higher up on the mountain. As we continued to climb we we treated to some great views of the Coe Glacier & the East side of Barret Spur.
We finally reached a point were we felt we could cross by traversing 3 mini ridges & one snow shoot, the first was easy.
The second was a little more tricky, lots of loose rock down to a snow field we sent Eric on ahead
..
Then we followed!
Once we were all across we continued on to the third.
Finally the glacial tarn Thomas & Fred had mentioned came into view below us so we new we were getting close.
Once we arrived at the tarn we could see the remains of the Mooney Plane below us, but before descending we stopped for lunch (now 3:30pm) at the tarn which is a lovely place & now once of my new favorite places on Hood. If this place does not have a name then we need to come up with a Portland Hikers name for it. Mooney Tarn seems obvious but perhaps the name of the poor pilot who crashed here might be more fitting.
This is my home made altimeter
...
The plane crashed into a pretty meadow area just below the tarn.
Now 4:00pm we had to think about getting home. We followed the path of least resistance as we climbed back down to the Timberline trail, this took us slightly further to the East but it was a very easy decent and I would recommend this as an easy way up too. The coordinates were we intersected the Timberline are: N 45 degrees 23.9704, W121 degrees 40.5943 at 5810'
Once back on the Timberline trail we headed West & home! On returning to the Coe we found it quite a bit higher than it had been in the morning, while Eric made an Olympic Jump across, the rest of us took the Bridge!
On leaving Elk Meadows we could look back at the area of the mountain were we had been. The yellow X in the photo below marks the approximate location of the Tarn & Mooney Plane as seen from above Elk Cove.
We still had one more surprise for the day, about half way between Elk Cove & the Wyeast Basin this Marmot came to check us out. This one was the only one brave enough to show him or herself but from all the chatting that was going on as we passed there were several more in the rocks!
We got back to the Wyeast basin just as the Sun was beginning to set.
Just shy of three miles to go & the sun setting fast! We finally got back to the car at 7:30 in the dark! What we thought was going to be a 12 mile 7 hour hike turned into a 16.5 mile 10 hour hike but it was a really great day on the mountain.
Here is our GPS track of the day courtesy of Eric, the section with yellow dots is our descent route from the plane back to the Timberline. (clicking on this image will bring up a larger version.)
More photos of the Plane & the rest of the day can be found here.
