8.2 miles of hiking • 1250' elevation gain •
I had planned on doing a hike with a meetup group from Multnomah fallls to Nesika Lodge, however circumstances intervened and I found myself unable to make the meetup time, so I went to my bucket list and pulled one out. As I drove through the thick fog out of Portland I wondered if I would be able to see anything other than the tree in front of me. But no! Once I got out of Portland the sky cleared up and turned into a day for stellar views. I started my hike from the road to the shortcut trail behind Bonneville Hotsprings. The trail starts out fairly narrow and sided by blackberry bushes but only for a hundred feet or so. It soon opened up into fairly open forest with ferns and moss. I cruised up and around Carpenter Lake, which offered a good view of Table Mountain and Sacajawea rock, crossed the PCT seeing lots of small springs and creeks along the way. The trail was mostly really well graded with just short sections of slight steepness and offered occasional teasers views of the gorge. But of course the real star of this hike is the rock slide area at about mileage 3.7. which offers a stellar view of the sheared off cliffs of Table Mountain and gorge views as well. Which is where I opted to have lunch Just a little bit further was Lower Greenleaf falls, which was much more scenic than I expected. All in all a great day and a great start to the New Year.
