Burnt Lake from Enola Hill, Jul 7th

Both Burnt Lake and Cast Lake on the west side of Mount Hood can be accessed via trails that start from Lolo Pass Road. Those trails are really nice although offer some partial views of the mountain right in front of you unless you continue higher up the ridge to get a clear view. An option that is more rewarding, in my opinion, is to go up from Enola Hill. The reason is that the trail takes you over the ZigZag trail which has an incredible view of the mountain. It also gives you a nice chance to explore the south side of ZigZag Mountain where a lot of Devil’s places are. The road to this trail is pretty bad so it takes a bit of time getting there, but once there, it’s likely you’ll have the trail to yourself. The first part of this hike meanders thru the forest as it gains elevation towards the saddle with limited views of meadows. In season the wildflowers are fantastic in the area. Still, for reasons I do not know, a lot of places in the area are named after the devil: Devil’s Lake, Devil’s Meadow, Devil’s Tie, Devil’s Canyon… I guess the devil made a mess here at some point. As you get closer to the saddle, the trail gets steeper forcing you to do several switchbacks, but then, the big surprise comes. First you see the end of the trail, and then you see the trail sign indicating the junction with the ZigZag trail and then, the view. A big drop off in front of you opens the entire west side of Mount Hood right in front of you. It’s simply breathtaking. From up there you can easily spot Burnt Lake down below but that’s not the only place you can get from this point. Following the trail east took us to the junction that then climbs down thru several switchbacks to the Lake. We found a lot of people and even more dogs enjoying the warm weather and jumping in the lake. We took a trail that goes around the lake until we found a nice place for lunch and then continued making a short stop on the south shore to wet our feet in the water. Later we hiked backup to the ridge, but instead of taking the same route down, we continued west on the ZigZag trail to the East ZigZag lookout for even better views. There are still numerous options to continue from here but to return to our cars, we took the trail that heads down to Cast Lake and then the Devil’s Tie that connects with the ZigZag trail farther down. From there we retraced our steps down to the car to finish the nice, close to town hike




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