Flag Mountain - 9/20/14

[justpeachy]

Last weekend Greg and I tackled two short hikes near Mt. Hood on Saturday. The first one was Flag Mountain (not to be confused with Flag Point) near Rhododendron.

From the little trailhead parking area off of Road 20 the trail starts out steep, launching straight up the mountain. After about a mile (not quite) of climbing up through the forest, the trail reaches a little viewpoint.




The traffic noise is quite loud here. But the view of Mt. Hood is pretty good, considering that this viewpoint is only about 2,500'.




In the background is the long undulating ridgeline of Zigzag Mountain. In the foreground is Enola Hill:

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That's it. Just a short little jaunt on a little-known trail. The trail does continue down the other side of the mountain to road 2632 where there's a second trailhead.

[bobcat]

Yes, a little up and down trail near civilization. There is manzanita growing near the summit, which is always a surprise although it shouldn't be. For my mother's 80th birthday (September 12th, 2004), we rented a house near here, and my wife and I hiked over the top of Flag Mountain. Off the trail, we found a little September 11th memorial, freshly flowered, and put there by some locals who had kin perish in the disaster.

[Splintercat]

This is an old familiar trail for me -- my family had a cabin on Road 35A growing up, so I explored that area extensively. That trail also has the distinction of being nearly snow free through much of the winter -- at most, a few inches after an especially cold storm would roll through. The summit cliffs used to be more open and clearly visible from the Tollgate vicinity, so good to know the view has survived, even with the forest growing up.

Thanks for posting, Cheryl!

Tom

[jeffstatt]

Last summer I accepted an invite with a guy to go mountain biking up near Mt Hood. I assumed we were heading toward to Sandy Ridge or one of the ski resorts. He ended up taking us to this very Flag Mountain. Pretty early into that very steep and narrow quarter mile, I was like "whoa dude you want to come down this way??!!". He told me that the guy at the Ranger desk in ZigZag told him is was a great unknown beginner riders trail. We ended up walking our bikes back down and headed to Sandy Ridge. So thanks for filling in this gap. I was always curious what the top was like