Fall is going strong up there. We saw lots of red leaves alongside the trail.
When we got to the meadow near Red Hill we inspected a pile of wood not far from the trail. Greg thinks this may have been a hunter's blind at one point. I can't believe someone hauled in all this plywood (there's more than you can see in this photo), especially since it was presumably done before the trail was cleared in 2007. Yikes!
We stopped at Alki Point, but the view to the north isn't so great with all the wildfire smoke.
Once past Alki Point the trail loses elevation. This section is also somewhat overgrown, although the trail is still easy to follow.
We hiked all the way out to the old trailhead, where the Red Hill Guard Station used to be. (I have no idea why the G.S. was named after a hill that is over a mile away.) I found a picture of the place from 1954 and it had a very unusual fire lookout platform up on the roof. I've never seen anything like it.
All that's left now is the foundation of the station.
And the foundation of some kind of garage or shed.
After that we hiked back up the way we came. We had skipped Owl Point before but visited it on our way out. The view, of course, was awesome.
Looking east.
Then we hiked back out to the car. We ran into seven other people on the trail during the afternoon, in addition to fellow Portland Hiker Jeff Stat and his family. Nice to see people hiking this great trail!
Of course on the way home we stopped at the informal roadside viewpoint for an evening view of our lovely mountain.
A few notes
I didn't notice this when I was at this trailhead on Labor Day, but there is a Northwest Forest Pass sign there. I didn't think this one required a pass, but I guess it does.
Since the trail is now the border of the wilderness thanks to the expansion in 2009, the Forest Service has put up about a dozen wilderness signs along the route. (I've seen signs like this before and the inclusion of hang gliders in the list of prohibited "vehicles" always makes me laugh.)
As has been discussed elsewhere, the Forest Service has gone through and taken down every single sign they could find on this trail (an official trail which appears on their own map!), which means that the junctions for the spur trails to the Rockpile and Owl Point are now umarked again. At the Rockpile junction we had to point some people in the right direction to get to Owl Point, and on our way out, about a third of a mile before reaching the wilderness permit stand, we ran into a couple who were hiking down from the Timberline Trail and had missed the turn back to the car. If the signs were in place neither of these groups would not have needed our assistance to find their way.
