Larch Mountain

This weekend, Zephyr and I went on a hike to Larch Mountain.  It's an old extinct volcano just about an hour from downtown Portland.  It was gorgeous!  The hike is a 6 mile loop, with a quad-busting portion at the end.  The first part (trail #441) is all a steep downgrade where you pass through an abandoned camp site and stone wall left from an old logging railroad grade.

The stone wall. Pleasantly downhill at this point.

After trekking downhill, we turned right on trail #444.  There we crossed a cool bridge made from a fallen tree.

Once across the bridge, we veered right onto the crater portion of the hike.  We went around the perimeter of a meadow field filled with wildflowers.  Our guidebook states it was once an old lake, but centuries of natural sediments have filled it.

Gigantic mushroom

Then we trekked straight vertical for about an hour.  At this point, a bee with a vengeance circled us for over a mile.  We freaked.  We're both terrified of bees. And to think I felt bad for those suckers after watching a documentary the night before our hike titled "Colony" about how bees are mysteriously disappearing.  This bee was PISSED.  We BOOKED IT.  We ran for about a half a mile until I realized the bee had abandoned me and moved on to Zephyr.  At this point, he took my pepper spray (intended for bears), and tried to kill off the attack bee while I watched, secretly laughing, from a distance.  It finally abandoned us when two other hikers passed by and it decided to latch on to them instead of us.  We were relieved, and felt the tinniest bit guilty for passing on the pissed-off stinging insect to nice strangers.  But not really.
After the bee incident, we decided the pick up our pace and get out of the attack forest.  After a major uphill portion, the trail somewhat flattened out for the last mile or so.  We passed lots of wild flowers and wild huckleberries.  The end of the hike drops you off about 1/2 mile from where the trailhead began.  I'd like to try this hike again in the spring.  Apparently the crater at the bottom fills up with water when the rains arrive, creating a serene lake in the middle of the forest. 

Directions:

From Portland take I-84 East and exit at Corbett (aka US 30).  At the junction, turn left to go east on the Historic Columbia River Highway.  At mile 22.9 turn right on Larch Mountain Road (just past the Women's Forum Overlook), and drive 14 miles to the trailhead at the end of the road. 

Note: Parking is $5 cash unless you have a forest pass (you can use the same one used for skiing/snowboarding on Mt Hood)