Devil's peak lookout is an abandoned fire lookout in the Mount Hood area. It hasn't been manned for several years and now maintained by volunteers and open to visitors. There are many ways to get to the lookout. Hunchback Mountain Trail, Kinzel Lake, Cool creek trail to name a few.
We took the cool creek trail to the lookout tower. Finding the trailhead was our first challenge. We had a clear direction, but somehow we missed the trailhead and went past it crossing the creek. We soon realized that and turned around to have a second attempt. This time we saw the trailhead.
I read it earlier that this is a very steep trail, climbing over 3300ft in ~3.5 miles. I didn't realized that fact until I was on the trail with an overnight pack with 5 liters of water. I also had a tent in case we don't get to sleep inside the lookout. We ran across one stream at 2 miles from the trailhead, but other than that there was no water along the entire ridge. There is a year-round spring somewhere around the lookout, but we didn't want to rely on that.
There aren't many views along the trail, as it stays in the forested area pretty much the entire time. Just before we reached the trail junction with Hunchback trail (going down to Kinzel Lake), there was a stunning viewpoint towards Mount Hood and Zigzag mountain.
Once we got to the lookout, we dropped our packs and explored inside the tower. I was surprised to see the items stocked in the cabinets there. We later chopped some wood to get wood fired stove going for the night.
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