The Quiet Pledge: What to do about overcrowding

[BigBear]

My not-so-quiet pledge is NEVER, EVER (and I do mean NEVER) will I be hiking to Tom-Dick Mountain on a summer weekend again. Did I say never. Passing the Mirror Lake trailhead on Saturday at 9:05 am, and it was projected to be a hotter than hell day, we saw a full parking lot...the shoulder a half-mile up the hill...full. Departing from Portland at 8 am bought you a place at Ski Bowl with a long walk on the shoulder int he morning and in the heat at the end of the day.

What has happened? This early arrival time used to put you in the fist half-dozen vehicles at the trailhead. It is now the new Dog Mountain of MHNF. Ugh! Even if you got there early, you would still have to contend with all those people.

I wonder what time of the day Reese there her boots off the mountain, not to have people in the background? (reference: opening scene of Wild)

[Bosterson]

I wonder what time of the day Reese [threw] her boots off the mountain, not to have people in the background? (reference: opening scene of Wild)

I think that was in the early 1990s...

[Guy]

Yeah always amazed when I drive by that TH on a weekend morning but we did Tom Dick and Harry a couple of weeks ago as an evening hike. Arrived at the TH at 5:30. A fair few people were coming down from the lake as we went in but between the lake and the Summit we saw only two other people nobody on the Summit with us..

[BigBear]

Bosterson: Cheryl Strayed did the trek in 1995, the Reese Witherspoon film was released in 2014.