Ramona Falls - Mount Hood

Total Hiking Miles - 8 miles
Elevation Gain - 1200 feet

With very high chance of rain, we wanted to get a short hike in. I hadn't been to Ramona Falls for quite sometime. So we decided to make a trip down there.

It is a fairly flat trail, but the river crossing is tricky. In about a mile form the trailhead, we got to the Sandy River crossing. The bridge was out since it got washed away last year and the Forest Service decided to not put one up for this year. After roaming around, we found a nice log to cross the river on.

After crossing, following relatively flat trail, we got to the falls in an hour or so.

It was nice and quite, only a few people rather than hordes of them on a typical summer day. We made our way back via creekside trail to complete the loop.

Devil's Peak Lookout Overnight

After spending the previous weekend at home, we decided it is time to take advantage of the good weather break. With recent snowfall on Thursday/ Friday, I was worried that we may encounter more snow than what the previous weeks' trip reports suggested. So was the case. Snowline was around 4000 feet and around 4200 feet, we started loosing the trail as we were trying follow few intermittent footprints. Regaining the trail through brush and slushy snow wasn't fun. I think that last mile or so took us about hour and a half to tackle. 

We got to the lookout tower at around 2 PM, happy to see that nobody was there - so we could get the lookout tower to ourselves. After exploring the cabin, we had a little snack and started playing cards.

Right around sunset, wind started picking up. It was howling at around 15-20 mph pretty much throughout the night. Shutter kept flapping around and that kept us up through the night. We woke up just before the sunrise and watched the sun come up behind Mt Hood from the patio. Very soon we were all packed up and hit the trail back to our car. Most of the snow had melted so way back to the car was much more relaxed. 

View of Mt Hood from the lookout tower at sunset