Timothy Lake is one of the largest lake within the Mount Hood National Forest in Oregon. The Lake is located about 60 miles East from Portland and take about 1.5 hours to get there. Timothy Lake also offers a lot of camp ground sites for recreational purpose and also allows motorized boat to be used on the lake. It is one of the most popular camping site within Mount Hood National Forest.
On the last weekend of September, right before the start of the raining season in Oregon, we decided to head to Timothy Lake to enjoy the last hike of the year. We left early around 7AM in the morning and instead of heading directly to Timothy Lake, we headed to Little Crater Lake instead since it is very close to Timothy Lake hiking trail.
The Timothy Lake hiking trail is around 13 miles around the lake. We started our hike around 9:30 in the morning and hiked along the East shore first. For the first 3 miles, we did not run into anyone and it was so quiet in the forest. As we approach towards the camp site, we started to run into people who are jogging and fishing on the lake. Since it was almost autumn season, many tree leaves started to turn red and yellow color. It was just amazing scenery.
As we approach the half way point of the hiking trail, we reached the dam at the South end of the lake. The dam is operated by PGE and we could see it draining the water to generate electricity. We also read a post on the sign saying the Oregon government is try to evaluate the ecosystem of the lake and have place many trouts with RFID tag on them. Whoever catches those trout can respond to survey on the web and could possibly earn $50 per trout! No wonder there were so many people fishing here!
While we hiked along the Northwest shore of the lake, we started to see more color changes of the tree leave. It was amazing. We loved the color of the maple trees that are grown between the evergreen trees.
We finally completed the hike around 4PM in the afternoon. Since we did take our time enjoying our lunch and took our time to take pictures, the whole hike took about 5.5 hours. Other than being a long distance hike, the trail is pretty easy with pretty much no elevation at all. We highly recommend visiting Timothy Lake and enjoy the time hiking on the beautiful trail!
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