Today’s hike was my birthday hike. I have the week off and today was my birthday, so I decided to take a hike (no pun intended). I decided to hike the Bull of the Woods trail up to the lookout since I was doing a mid week hike. I was hoping I wouldn’t encounter any people. It can get rather busy at times.

We headed out and made good time up to the trailhead. We got there just after 10:00 and found no cars there (whew!). We suited up and headed up the trail. The hike up was pretty uneventful, but I did get some nice views of Mt Hood from the trail:

We probably stopped once or twice to drink some water, and I stopped a few times to eat some huckleberries – they were all over the place right next to the trail, but it didn’t seem like anyone was eating them! Thor even ate a few – they were small, but REALLY good.

Just before noon we made it to the lookout. I could tell Thor was tired. He laid down under the lookout and I went up to look around. I had an experience I’ve never had up here before – I was actually able to go inside the lookout! Someone had replaced windows and had one of the storm shutters propped open. This is what it looks like inside the lookout:

Nothing hugely special – pretty much typical of what you’d see in a lookout. There were lots of tools in there – a few years ago I remembered seeing shingles inside the lookout – I couldn’t tell if they had used them on the roof or not, but they were gone. Someone had replaced some of the windows in the lookout however, so it does appear to be getting a little bit of attention.

From the catwalk on the lookout it gives you great views of the surrounding mountains and peaks. Looking northeast, there was a great view of Mt Hood and Big Slide Mountain:

And to the south there was Mt Jefferson and Three Sisters:

I was enjoying the view from up there, but Thor was whining because I was up there, so after taking a few photos I came down. We ate lunch in the shade under the lookout where Thor laid down for a bit. I just enjoyed the view and the solitude for a while and then we decided to head back down. As we started down, I realized I hadn’t taken a photo of the lookout, so I snapped a quick one from the trail below as we were leaving:

As we headed down, I was stopping to eat some of the huckleberries and encountered a couple that was backpacking. They must have come up from Dickey Lake because when I got back there were still no cars in the trailhead lot. We passed each other quickly (in a covid world) and I continued down. As we got partway down, I decided to start looking for insulators – I’d never been able to find any, but today I found two – here is one I found:

We made good time going down, and the last thing I wanted to do was to try and find the old alignment of this trail. I had made a waypoint at some point marking “old trail”. When coming up, I realized it was where a post was. There was no tread apparent right at the junction, but going just offtrail, the old tread was quite evident. Here is a photo looking back up to the existing trail and the post. The tread is all there, just overgrown with huckleberries:

Here is another section not quite so overgrown:

It was pretty easy to follow all the way down to where it ended at an old spur road – I’m guessing the old trailhead must have been here at one point:

We walked back this road to the truck. Here is a view of Pasola Mountain from the 6340-033 spur – the original trail used to go to the left of Pasola and would have met up with this alignmnent I’m pretty sure – but that was a long time ago:

We soon made it back to the truck and headed out.

The last memorable thing about the day was on the way out a fox trotted across the road in front of me. He didn’t seem too concerned about me – he wasn’t running or anything. First time I’ve ever seen a fox in the woods!

It was a great way to spend my birthday.