Yes, this is a loop I’ve done more than once and it’s always a good challenge early in the season to get those uphill needed muscles ready. This time around though, I decided to make a short change to the loop to make it a bit better. If you read the numerous guides about this loop, you’ll note that they start from the Elk Mountain trailhead. There’s two issues with this approach that I’ve experienced. The first one is that there’s no warmup time. Right from the sign post you start going almost straight up. By the time you get to the first view point you’re completely out of breath which will slow you down for the rest of the loop. The other issue is that you leave the Wilson River trail section for last. That section is about 3 miles of little ups and downs that, after going over Elk and Kings it’s just boring and never ending. So what we did this time instead was start from the King’s Mountain trailhead and do the Wilson River section first. Not only that served as a warmup for the Elk Mountain trail but it made the trail more enjoyable being early in the morning. Those 3 miles went pretty quickly and by the time we started climbing we were pretty warm and ready. We did luck with the weather that kept fresh and with good views throughout the day. On the way up we enjoyed all the viewpoint stops until we got to Elks were we made our first pack-off stop to eat half of our lunches. From there we continued on the Elk trail to the junction with the Kings trail that goes thru several knife edge ups and downs.
We had some pretty high clouds that made the sky look really interesting while still offering views of Mt hood (which is a rare sight from this trail). We made a second stop at what is roughly the middle point of the hike although not the most scenic. The hike from there to kings was actually easier than expected, part of it because we found the trail has been cleaned and maintained lately so it was a lot easier to follow that other times I’ve done it. Even the rope section and the couple of muddy switchbacks before the summit were easy to traverse this time. From the top of Kings we were welcomed with views of Mt Hood and Mt Adams peeking in the distance. We also meet with multiple hikers coming up from the Kings Mountain trailhead. We took our last breather before heading straight down to the parking lot. Everyone I the group liked starting the loop from Kings so I think I’ll stick with this one.
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