McNiel Point

 

McNiel Point is a quite popular hiking trail within Mount Hood National Forest. The trail goes through variety of terrains including great view of Mount Hood, the view over Mount Hood Forest, and the wildflower meadows. The trail is about 10 miles long round trip with about 2000 feet elevation gain. Thus the trail itself is not really difficult. The trail head is at Top Spur, which can be reached by going through LoLo Bypass Road. The parking space at the trailhead is limited however, but people usually park on the side of the road.

On this super hot day in Oregon, we decided to get somewhere high in the mountain to cool ourselves down. We got to the trail head around 8:30AM. It took us about 1.5 hours to get here. When we got there, the parking lot was already full and we had to park on the side of the road. The trail also requires Northwest Pass. When we were there, there were several groups of people carrying camping gears to do the Timberline trail.

As we started our hike and reached an intersection with 3 trails leading to different direction. The notice board has a map and requires every hiking group to fill out the safety form. We then took the trail #600 on the left.

The first portion of the trail is to go through the forest. This part is about 1.5 miles long with some elevation gain. The trail itself was quite wide with a couple of bugs flying around of course. After 1.5 miles, we got out to the lookup point which has a great view of Mount Hood. We had a quick little rest and reapplied the bug spread before heading further.

After about another 1.5 miles, we got to the meadows where all the beautiful wildflowers were. The wildflowers were simply just on the side of the trail and was beautiful. Some part of the trail requires people to go across streams of water, but it wasn't a big deal for us.

After about 4 miles of hike, we got to the rocky area where we had to climb over rocks on the side of the cliff. This part may sound and seem scary, but it was very easy to get through. We saw a guy trying to climb this with his hiking pole, and he was having a lot of difficulties. So the advice is not to use hiking pole here.

After 2.5 hours, we got to McNiel Point, which is at the shelter made out of rocks. The view from the top over the Mount Hood National Forest was breath taking. We could see mountains on the far side and the river running below. While we enjoy some food at the top, there were several dogs running by as well and asking for food. These dogs were quite energetic.

As we headed back down, we ran into a group of people with a Black Labrador Retriever. The Black Lab suddenly sat down in the middle of trail and she seemed exhausted.

Overall, this trail is one of the most amazing trail. We would definitely come again and next time we could try to do a night hike to see the sunrise from there.

Skyline Trail

 

Skyline Trail is located at Paradise within Mount Rainier National Park. It is located at the South side of Mount Rainier and it is one of the most popular trail within the park due to its panoramic view of the mountains. Skyline Trail is a loop that goes up along the ridge of Mount Rainier and loops back to Paradise. It has a total distance of about 5.5 miles with some elevation gain. It also goes by the Myrtel Falls.

We left Portland early in the morning around 5:30AM and got to Paradise around 8:30AM. The parking lot at Paradise was nearly full at this time. We were shocked at the amount of people there. We didn't know the trail and Mount Rainier National Park is so popular.

Unfortunately, the weather was not so good on this day. It was extremely foggy with visibility of about 10 meters and has a lot of mist in the air. We couldn't even see the mountains.

We started the Skyline Trail hike around 9AM. Instead of heading to Myrtel Falls first, we headed the other way towards West first. The trail started to climb right away but it was not difficult at all. The first part of the trail was even paved and very easy to walk on.

When we went past the intersection that heads to the glacier lookout, the trail was covered by thick snow. The snow on the trail has not completely melted yet. Thus we walked on top of the snow field to cross to the next section of the trail. The rest of the trail was quite easy to follow with signs and we got to panorama point by 10:30AM.

At the panorama point, it was so foggy and misty. We couldn't see anything at all. There was so much mist in the air and our hair were wet. Since we just climbed up to panorama point, our body was still warm, thus we took the rest to have some food. While we were up there, we were surprised that there was toilet here a panorama point.

We continued on Skyline Trail after having rested at panorama point. The next section of the trail was beautiful. There was a variety of wildflowers blooming along the mountain side with different colours. We have never seen so many wildflowers bloom at once with different colors. It would have been an amazing sight if it wasn't so foggy.

While we were heading down the Skyline Trail on the East side, there were more sections of the trail covered with large pile of snow. Some part of the snow covered trail was slippery and we had to slide down due to the steepness of it, but it was quite fun. We enjoyed it quite a lot. We also had to cross a rushing stream of water and make sure our feet did not soak in the water.

We got back down to Paradise by 12:30PM. It was a great experiencing doing the Skyline Trail. The fog was clearing a bit but not complete. We still could not see the top of the mountain.

While we were driving back down the mountain, we also saw a Blacktail Deer along the side of the road. We were surprised that he was not afraid of the cars.

This was our first time visiting Mount Rainier National Park and it was much closer to us than we thought. We would definitely come here more often in the future.