The Barlow District of the Mt. Hood National Forest lies east of the Hood River drainage in the Cascades transition zone. Here western hemlock, red-cedar and Douglas-fir meet ponderosa pine,
Engelmann spruce, western larch, and east-slope grand fir. The area is also characterized by a large number of hydric (wet) and xeric (dry) meadows that support an interesting transitional flora. There are a number of old clearcuts along the trails as well as the decaying remains of thousands of diseased conifers from outbreaks of spruce budworm, which usually follow east-side drought cycles.
The top end of the Eightmile Loop begins off FR 44 on Spur 120. This is also the trailhead for the Knebal Springs and Bottle Prairie Trails. I spent about 40 minutes poking around the edges of lush Bottle Prairie itself before heading up the Bottle Prairie Trail.
I passed through a xeric meadow and then the Eightmile turnoff to continue as far as Perry Point to get views south to Flag Point and Tygh Ridge and east to the rolling Columbia Plateau.
The Eightmile Loop Trail itself rises through forest and glades and then drops to cross a road with the Fivemile Ridge looming ahead. I scrambled up to the ridge here on loose andesite flagstones to get a great view north to Hood, St. Helens, Rainier and Adams.
The trail continues below the ridge crest on its south side and rises to a junction. Here I turned left and visited the Fivemile Lookout, one of those towers which caters to overnighters at $50/day with all the amenities: woodshed, outhouse, picnic table and fire circle. This incarnation of the structure is about 55 years old.
From the lookout, the trail drops down the nose of the ridge through thinned forest and an old clearcut, making wide, sweeping loops to accommodate mountain bikers, who use the paths in this area much more than hikers (and it is thanks to the mountain biking community that these trails are logged out in the spring and regularly repaired). The route enters shady forest again and reaches the bottom end of the Eightmile Loop. I continued east from this point, however, to cross FR 4430 and enter the Eightmile Campground.
Walking through the campground area, I searched out the “interpretive trail” I had seen on maps. It begins on a level graveled tread opposite Campsite 14 and crosses Eightmile Creek twice on large, stocky, unfinished footbridges. Most of the blowdown on the trail has been removed, but I saw no sign of interpretive markers. It seems this trail is in the process of a facelift. After a mile or so, it reaches the Lower Eightmile Forest Camp.
I returned to the bottom of the Eightmile Loop, met the only other trail user of my day, a biker, and headed up in dry, shady woods above Eightmile Creek. The trail passed an old clearcut redolent of blooming snow brush and crossed the creek once before reaching the trailhead at Bottle Prairie.
This is a short loop: 6.2 miles; with my extensions to Perry Point and the “interpretive” trail, the hike was about 10 miles total.
Note: An excellent botanizing day would be catching 100 species in bloom. I identified 97, so it was a fair haul anyway.
