Today’s hike would be considered a “check a trail off the ‘trails to hike’ list”. I’ve wanted to hike this trail for a while now. I had thought I hiked it twice before, but I guess I’ve only hiked it once – way back in 2013. It was way past time to hike it again.

Today’s trip had a few “words of the day” – Driving, cool and windy kept coming to mind. I had originally thought about bringing my drone – that would have been cool to see some shots from the top of the butte. I looked at the pinpoint weather forecast and it said gusts up to 30mph, so I figured it wouldn’t be a good day for flying – I’m glad I didn’t bring it – more on that later. Since 224 and the 57 road were still closed, we had to take the long way around Mt Hood, so it was a lot of driving.

We made it to the powerline crossing on the 4220 road a little before 11:00. When we got out of the truck, it was what I’d term “breezy” – not really windy, but there was the occasional breeze that would kick up. It wasn’t all that warm either (~50 degrees or so). We suited up and then found the beginning of the trail and started our way up. The trail at the beginning is a little brushy in places and there were a few small trees across the trail, but it was obvious that the trail gets a fair amount of use – even though it doesn’t appear to get much maintenance.

It isn’t too far before the trail crosses the PCT and continues its slow, steady climb. If you look at the elevation profile for the trail, it is one of the most well graded trails I’ve ever been on. There are a few very short sections that are a little steeper (especially up higher), but the vast majority of the trail is just a really nice gradual uphill climb. The trail is almost always headed uphill on a relatively gradual grade. It is a very well constructed trail.

As we headed up, the trail kind of alternates between burned and unburned sections. The unburned sections are really nice:

The burned sections vary – some are not too bad:

And some are pretty bad – mostly due to downed logs:

As we proceeded higher on the trail, we got a decent view of the Olallie Lakes basin – SiSi is in the distance to the left of center – I think that yellow area is Olallie Meadow:

We continued up the trail – for some reason, today was a bit tougher than I thought it should have been. Maybe it was because this was my second hike in two days or maybe it was just the elevation that was tougher for me. As we got higher, we started getting into the clouds – visibility got worse and worse – and the wind gusts got stronger and more frequent:

We continued the trudge up the trail – there were sections that were kind of wiped out from downed logs, but most of them were pretty easy to get around – there were well worn re-routes around the worst of the blowdown. A handsaw to limb up some of these downed logs would do wonders. As we got higher, you couldn’t see anything:

When we got to the last switchbacks before the top, you are mostly above the tree line. It was hard to see and Thor ended up walking us off one of the switchbacks. After a bit, I realized we had missed the trail. We worked our way back over to where the trail was – it was kind of rough going and I had my knit hat in my hand and at some point I dropped it. When we got back to the trail, I realized I had dropped it. It was my favorite orange hat – the one Abby gave me. I was bummed I dropped it, but I wanted to get up to the top.

As we approached the top, the winds started picking up and the fog was more dense. We finally popped out on top and the winds were insane. It was so bad, I didn’t want to go anywhere up on top. I took a quick video:

And then headed back down. It was amazing how much the wind velocity increased once you went over the edge of the top – Olallie Butte is pretty flat on top and it is a very large area up there. It is an interesting area and I was kind of bummed I wasn’t able to see the views or any of the stuff on top. Once back down over the edge, it was still really foggy – and still windy, but it was WAY better than on top.

We got down a couple of switchbacks, and I stopped for a short break to do my logging on my phone (I’ve been doing a study to determine if it is worthwhile to switch to T-Mobile). I did that, and then started thinking about my dropped hat. I decided to walk back up the trail and try and re-trace my steps to see if I could find it. We followed the route I took (walking off the end of a switchback and then walking uphill and then back over to the trail). Along the way, I was looking for my hat and I ended up finding it in EXACTLY the spot I thought I might have dropped it. It was a tough spot to get across.

With my hat found – and me really glad I found it – we headed back down the hill. It wasn’t long before it seemed like it was beginning to clear a bit. At one point, we got a VERY quick glimpse of Olallie Lake:

As we got lower, the sun started coming out intermittently. It was getting noticeably warmer and clearer. It felt like a long ways down, but we finally made it back to the truck. My legs and feet were feeling the roughness of the trail and it felt good to be done for the day. I think Thor felt the same way. Many hikes these days, he won’t jump into the truck in the morning – I’m guessing he is kind of stiff in the morning, but after a day of hiking, he jumps into the truck no problem. Today, he needed help to get into the truck and he crashed out. It was a good day, but a bit disappointing since we got no views or anything after all that effort.

Since we had driven all that way, I decided to continue down the road to Olallie. I stopped at the store to get a gatorade and a candy bar. I wasn’t sure if they had any ice cream (they didn’t), but a candy bar sounded good after a long day of hiking.

Since I hadn’t been down past Olallie for a few years – I think the last time was when I hiked the Horseshoe Saddle trail 3 years ago. I thought I’d drive down there to see what things looked like after all the clearing work that has been done. As we were driving around Olallie Lake, you get this really great view of Olallie Butte – and it was now completely cleared up – this was only about 2 hours after we were up there – but I’m guessing it was still really windy up there:

We drove down to Horseshoe Campground – it didn’t look a whole lot different from the last time I was there – just LOTS of down/cut logs and bunches of burn piles.

As we were driving back, I took this picture of the carnage just south of Monon Lake:

With that complete, we started the long drive back home. I was really surprised how many people I saw on the roads today. It was a Wednesday after Labor Day – I was not expecting so much traffic. With that said, it wasn’t quite as bad as I was fearing – the trip from home to the trailhead was just about two hours – and the trip home was about the same. While it was disappointing to not be able to get the views from the top of Olallie Butte, it was very interesting to hike that trail again – I need to keep this one on my “trails to hike” list.