Oregon Hikers

We heard about new hiking trails put in by Mount Hood Meadows and figured we would give it a try. We were a little concerned that the trails would be crowded, especially on a holiday weekend, but were pleasantly surprised. We went on Friday, and back again on Sunday. Friday, we went to the top of the Stadium Chair. Here there were several groups who road the chairlift up. But they did not wander far from it, keeping the trails isolated. We only saw two other people on the trail, one of them was a worker. The trails we went on were 99.5% snow free and about 75% bug free. We went to Picnic Rock and had a snack. On Sunday, we started from the base lodge and went counter clockwise to the Umbrella Falls, Sahalie Falls, to the Elk Meadows trail and back up the Umbrella Falls Trail. Sunday was more crowded, especially between Umbrella and Sahalie Falls. We only passed three small groups (2-5 people and dogs) on the remainder. Lots of wildflowers, views and the trails were in great shape. Maybe one or two trees down that were easy to get around.

One observation - the trails were labelled with a number out in the field, but not named. You can get a map of the summer hiking trails from the Mount Hood Meadows website. Here's a photo of the marker. As long as you know your trail number you are OK. But it would be hard to get lost.

Some of those Meadows ski runs have some of the best flower shows around. Not sure if the resort does anything specially different, but sometimes other ski areas runs are pure blight in the summer. Anyway, good on them for adding these hiking routes.

TwoPaw wrote: ↑

July 11th, 2021, 8:11 pm

Some of those Meadows ski runs have some of the best flower shows around. Not sure if the resort does anything specially different, but sometimes other ski areas runs are pure blight in the summer. Anyway, good on them for adding these hiking routes.

I believe Mt. Hood Meadows doesn't use salt like Timberline does. But like you, good on them for adding those trails. More trails spreads out the pressure on other trails, or at least for now.

Many of their runs were natural meadows before the resort was built in the 1960s -- an extension of today's Hood River Meadows (which was also the original name of the resort), whereas the runs at Timberline and SkiBowl were largely carved out of forests, and thus mostly beargrass and huckleberries (and stumps) in the off-season. Meadows has plenty of these, too!

Tom

FYI, I've added these trails to OpenStreetMap: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/45.3340/-121.6569