5.5 miles of hiking • 1250' elevation gain • 1 night
Last Friday I noted how nice it was at Warren Lake on my way to Defiance, and how nice it would probably be to camp up there and just hang out and go in the water and read. Sooo.... my friend had somewhere early to be today, so yesterday we drove up the back way to the Mitchell trailhead, yielding a whopping 3/4 mile stroll down to Warren Lake. We spent the rest of the day wading in the lake and lying in the sun reading. Then, after dinner, we scampered up to the summit (a lot of snow has melted, even from last Friday when I was up there!) for the Solstice sunset. We went to sleep under the trees, and after breakfast were back at the car 20 minutes after leaving camp. If I lived in Hood River, I would go up there that way all the time.
Weirdest thing: around 10pm last night, two runners covered in blinking lights ran through the Warren Lake area and promptly got lost trying to go up the hill immediately after the lake. Once they found the trail, we never saw them again.
Eric Peterson
June 22, 2011
There was a report of some lost trail runners in the Gorge recently..