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.
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