Sevenmile Hill is located West of Dales, just 1.5 hours of drive time from Portland. Sevenmile Hill is located by the Columbia Gorge, but it is on the South side of the mountain. Sevenmile Hill is not as popular as Rowena Crest for wildflower seeing due to its remote location; however, it is one of the best place to see rows and rows of wildflowers.
With the beautiful weather on the April weekend, we drove to Sevenmile Hill to have a great view of wild flowers. The hiking trail at Sevenmile Hill is a bit different from the usual hiking trail with markers, parking lot, and clear hiking path. The Sevenmile Hill trail is rather odd. The parking lot of simply an unpaved and barely maintained rocky space on the side of the road. There isn't any trail marker either. The hiking path is essentially not visible. There isn't really a hiking path for people to clearly follow.
When we got there at 8:30AM, there was already a car there The gravel road continues further to an empty gravel area, but that is a privately owned land. Thus we parked where we should park at the open space on the side of the road. When we got off the car, we could not figure out where the trail starts. We did download the trail map from the Oregon Hiking site before we came, thus we tried our best to follow the trail.
We first walked upwards and towards left, and then essentially going up the hill. As we moved across the river stream, we finally found a barely visible walking path. Thus we then followed the path to head up the hill. The climb of the hill was a bit steep, but not entirely difficult. The most wonderful thing is the view of the wildflower as we hike. There was just so much wildflower along the trail. It was so magical! This is probably the best wildflower viewing spot we have ever been to.
As we continue to head up, we eventually got to the top of the hill and there were fences blocking the private area. The fences mark the furthest we could go on the hill. We sat at the top of the hill to enjoy this beautiful view under the sun. It was extremely relaxing.
As we head back down, we could see the parking lot from the top. There were 3 more cars that arrived after us. However, as we head back down to the car, we did not run into any hikers. We figured that other people could not find the hiking trail either.
Overall, this was such an amazing hike. This hike was at a remote place and not crowded at all, but it is a gem in Pacific Northwest. If you like wildflowers, this is definitely the place to go!
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