12.4 miles of hiking • 3000' elevation gain •
I hiked up to Gnarl Ridge from Elk Meadows / Sahalie Falls TH on Saturday. I passed through a number of downed trees on the switchback climb up the ridge to Elk Meadows, but they were not too hard to get around. There seems to be a good amount of beargrass flowers budding, but not yet blooming, along this portion of the trail. Once up on the ridge, I visited Elk Meadows first, going to the Shelter to take in the Mount Hood view. It is very green and summery in the meadow! At one part, elephant head flowers are blooming. I rarely seem to run into these flowers - they are so fascinating! The small meadow right before the shelter has bloomed with a ton of shooting star and some yellow flowers. I went up to Gnarl Ridge from the connector trail from Elk Meadows. The only snow on the Timberline trail was on the trail side below Lambertson Butte. There were some longer stretches of it, but, it was ok to walk through, although it was a little slushy. With the way the snow is melting, it will probably be gone soon. Once I got to the old shelter remains, the trail was clear of snow. I continued on up the ridge to about 6900 feet elevation. A fair amount of phlox is blooming up there. It was really tempting to continue on to Cooper Spur shelter, but I had extra stuff with me in case I ran into more snow, and I was a little tired of lugging it around in the heat. I thought about taking the Newton Creek trail back, to make a bit of a loop, but the last time I did that, it was difficult to find the trail on the other side of Newton Creek. Cairns were everywhere and not helpful. So, I decided to save that adventure for another day. I took the Gnarl Ridge trail down from the Timberline trail. It had a lot of downed trees along the ridge, some appeared to have been there a while. It was not hard to get around - just annoying. It was a fairly quiet day on the trail. I saw a few people around the meadow and about 4 groups on the Timberline trail around Gnarl Ridge. I made a quick hike out to Sahalie Falls once I got back to the trailhead, and quickly remembered that you can probably see that falls with greater ease from the road. I scrambled to the bottom of it anyway. All in all, it was a great day of hiking.
