22.5 miles of hiking • 3250' elevation gain •
Even with so-so weather, this ended up being a nice day hike.
I took the longish ride up to Wahtum Lake to see how many small peaks I could cover in a day. Not getting there until 10:30 or so, I had my work cut out for me. First was Indian Mountain. I decided to walk the back road over to the PCT and then head up the short cut toward the little peak, but heavy clouds made me think to keep looking for other options while things cleared out. Buck Peak looked interesting, so I headed further down Waucoma Ridge.
The clouds started to clear, so I did some quick math and decided that my time would be better spent hitting the peaks up toward Wahtum. I turned around and hit Indian Mountain next. Unfortunately, it was one of those let's-clear-all-the-clouds-below-4400' kind of clearing, so things were socked in and freezing at the top.
Next was Tomlike. I made my way back down the PCT, across the cut-off, and then up the top end of the Herman Creek trail. Looking at the clock, it was already 3:30 or so, and things were still clouded in. And it was really, really windy. Not wanting to deal with the freezing wind, I decided to just go to the first large outcropping and then head back towards Chinidere.
Chinidere had better views, but Mt. Hood was completely obscured. All in all, not a bad day—even with all the cloud cover, it was nice to get out in some real Oregon weather again.
