Once again, I thank all the people who have put their efforts online to give information on such hikes. I had gone thru the Oregon Exploration video multiple times, the trail details from here and some other reports online. Everything was useful in some aspects, and we needed it as much since there's not a lot of details on the trail.
The previous week's hike to King's mountain was so "enticing" for my friends, everyone of them promptly dropped out of this hike.
One poor soul who missed out the previous week joined me on this one.
So, it's just 2 of us this time.We planned to start from the Aldrich Butte Trail head. We didn't have much trouble in finding this spot as we went thru the directions based on the details found online. We were the 1st to park our car there. We were skeptical about it as it was 7ish and were wondering if we are on the right trail.
Trail started with gradual inclination.
Another trail joined us here, not sure if it's the one from the Bonneville trail head which is where people seem to start from.
A nice marker, confirming what we read online. So, a sigh of relief even though we are still not 100% sure on the route.
This marker was destroyed by someone and the woods were thrown when we noticed it coming down. Why?
We found this camp after sometime which pretty much confirmed that we are definitely on the right track.
There was some creek below the camp and the noise accompanied us for quite a bit. This was the only noise that we heard so far, apart from ours.
More stuff from the camp site.
Another spot which seemed like a split, but the one to the left didn't go anywhere. We took a small break for water anyways.
I am not sure if someone left it as a marker, but we definitely considered this as one just in case. There was nobody else on this trail and these were the only signs so far that showed human movement in this area. So, we snapped whatever marks like this that we could.
After quite a bit of medium inclination, we reached the bottom of the Heart Break Ridge. Time for a break before the Heart break.
Here is just a sample of the Heart Break Ridge from this spot. So far, we haven't seen anyone on the mountain yet. But, we marched on.
Just as we passed the marker on to the Heart Break ridge, we could see a lady and a puppy running towards the PCT trail. The trail was so steeeeeep, that I didn't bother taking pictures for most of this stretch. Also, my friend who joined me on this didn't like this stretch one bit as this was his 1st major hike, and I dragged him to this. So, camera stayed put.
There was a guy who passed us while we struggled thru this stretch.
Slowly, we started seeing the gorge. We started to forget the arduous hike and started enjoying the scenery like a tourist.
I guess this is the Hamilton Mountain, but not sure.
While going thru some thick vegetation, all of a sudden the eroded mountain popped up.
After a mini-break of taking the pictures of the mountain, we walked few steps and it became a bit more open and we could see the gorge clearly. The photos may not do enough justice, but this spot was rewarding for all the hard work that we did so far.
A slightly closer look at the Columbia river.
The previous spot where we took the picture of the eroded mountain must have been at the bottom of this rock.
Another closer look of that rock.
Some activity on the river, as usual.
Though it was around 8:30 to 9 AM, it was still hazy.
After enjoying the views for few minutes, we hiked down a bit as expected and started to hike up again on to the major rocky portion. Here is a glimpse of it.
I walked a bit faster to this spot, and was waiting for my friend not knowing what his reaction will be after seeing this spot.
Thanks to the Oregon exploration video, he had the mindset to do this. So, no issues. We took a break, had some snacks and adjusted our bags and poles for the crawl all the way to top of the rocky portion. It wasn't easy, but not bad. Of course the camera went inside the bag from this spot.
After the rocks, we took the trail on the left side and walked up. My friend spotted another one on the right, but we decided to take this route which ended up being the right one anyways.
Within a minute or so, we heard some voice. There were 2 people walking thru the woods as they missed the trail somewhere and somehow used GPS and stuff and converged on to this trail. I asked them about the way to the summit and they also guessed this should be the way.
After about 0.4 miles we spotted the board at a junction that shows the PCT as well as the one to the summit.
About 0.3 miles from there is the summit.
We MADE it.
There was a sense of achievement for us. May be it's just a relief, didn't know what was to come after that.This "little" bag needed some time away from my sweat.
We met the same 2 people that we just said Hi sometime ago. They are brothers, and were on a hiking tour doing different mountains on that week. We had a nice chat with them talking about the routes that we took and the routes that we were going to take going down. They were going down the way we came up and we decided to go the PCT way.
Gorge on the way back.
Slowly we started to realize what we read online about this route. Some spots are scary and dangerous if you are not careful.
This picture doesn't do justice to the spot.
There's not a lot of pictures from this stretch as we were slipping and sliding our way down due to loose rocks and cliff on one side. In some spots we were sitting down and were still sliding down. Thanks to nice hiking shoes and poles, we survived. May be we lack the skills to do this trail, it was thrilling for us and we had no choice ( as we went down quite a bit) but to keep going down carefully and slowly. The hot sun and lack of wind didn't help the matter either. In a way, lack of wind helped us in not falling to the cliffs. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit on the wind effect.
After some time of crazy hike down, we found a spot which has nice views of the Gorge.
We could see the rocks that we climbed earlier in the day from here.
I guess the one on the right most is Hamilton.
Another view of the rocks that we climbed in the morning. Also, see the trail (if you can call that one) down below on which we walked.
Another view.
Bonneville dam.
Here is Mt.Hood. It wasn't visible to naked eyes. When I was taking a picture, I could see a bit.
One last picture of the gorge, before we were hoping to somehow cross this stretch and get under the trees.
Somehow we got the tree line and heaved a big sigh of relief. We kept pushing down till we went to those markers. We met few people on the way and explained our thrills to them. They didn't seem to be too perturbed, and sounded like they had been there and done that.
It took forever for us to come back to the car. Somewhere online we read that it's an 8 mile loop, but it felt much longer. My phone tracked it as 14+ miles. I definitely felt it like at least 12+ miles. Anyways, we felt very good about doing this hike.
Hope you liked this (long though) TR. Thanks.
, off the back side 
, down Cedar Mtn 
, all before the Meet&Deet... 