Dublin Lake, May 6th

Dublin Lake is a small unassuming lake in the north end of the Mt Hood Wilderness. I say unassuming because it sits surrounded with ridges that block any potential views you could have. Still, it’s a nice destination, maybe not for a day hike but if you are backpacking in the area and need a nice campsite. I say this because I stopped there when I did the Eagle-Tanner Butte loop a few years back. Since this time, we were not doing the loop, instead of starting from the Eagle Creek trailhead, we started from the new Tanner Butte trailhead along hwy84. From there, we hiked east following the paved trail until we found our detour to get on the trail. From the very beginning it was clear we were going to have some wildflowers as they fight to bloom despite the snow we still have. The first part of the hike can be a bit boring as you hike the old FR777 and pass multiple junctions until you get to the original Tanner Butte trailhead. From there on, things change, quickly. For starters, right at the trailhead you are welcomed by two waterfalls that join and continue as a single creek. As you get on the trail, you follow the stream of one of those waterfalls until you cross the creek shortly after. Then, it’s all the way up. By that point, you are immersed in the forest following a path marked by tall trees. The ridgeline is there somewhere but never close enough for you to say “I’m here”. Eventually the trail levels off a bit and you get to the junction with the Wauna Point trail, another great destination. We stopped for a short minute, mostly to use the facilities though. Then we continued and the trail got step and steady going up. By then we started finding patches of snow here and there that got thicker as we continued. At a certain point, the trail leveled off a bit again close to where we needed to veer off on the Dublin Lake trail. On the way in, we didn’t see the sing on the tree but gauged that we had passed it already, so we went off trail in the general direction of the lake. That made us bushwhack our way downhill to a big white patch just south of the lake. Once down there, we traversed the patch and got to our destination. A little frozen lake in the middle of the forest. We took a short break for lunch and then found our way back out and to the main trail to head back down the same way. It was a great, needed workout!

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