Hike 23 - Larch Mountain

Larch Mountain

Date: 8/15/12

Time: 8.5 hours

Distance: 15.4 miles

Difficulty: Strenuous 

Stars: 4

View from the top!

Larch Mountain has been on our hiking to-do list since our very first trip to Multnomah Falls during our move out to Portland. There are a bunch of signs that say Larch Mounting is about 7 miles one way. We always figured we would do this hike for our 100th mile hiked, but we lost track of that.

So this hiked had some planning since it was the longest hike we have done! I had off on a random Wednesday (I worked on Saturday of that week) so we planned to do this hike then. In the middle of August we knew the trails would be busy, so we were hoping a Wednesday would help (and it did!). We had a later start than what we wanted, not getting to the trailhead until almost 10:30 am! And we were planning on at least 8 hours for the planned 13.8 mile hike. If you take a peak at the stats above, we took longer than 8 hours and went a total of 15.4 miles! It was wonderful! We had packs full of water, snacks, and lunch plus some layers even though it was a high of 90 degrees! 

August was a good month to hit this hike as there were a bunch of Larch Mountain huckleberries that were ripe for the picking along the trail. There were also lots of wild flowers! And unfortunately many spiders with webs (I hate spiders) but most spun their webs above head height on the trail.

Trailhead that leads to the bridge and top of Multnomah Falls
which then continues all the way to Larch!

Starting the hike and super excited!

A bridge we have turned around near on past hikes that was also a little shady!

Water break! There were lots of those!

BIG TREES!!!!!!

Rock slide!

Spider. Gross. Kyle took this.

Instead of opting to do a long day hike to the top of Larch, you could instead choose to drive to the summit. Not nearly as cool! There is an option of a 6 mile loop near the top so we did pass more people on this part of the trail. When other hikers asked how long we had been out, it was a good moment to tell them Kyle and I had started our hike at the Multnomah Falls parking lot area. People were impressed :)

The summit is called Sherrard Point with an elevation of 4,056 feet. Since the summit is so easily accessible there was a fence and some benches at the top of an old fire lookout post. We could easily see Mt. Hood from the top, but since it was a hazy day we could barely make out Mts. Adams, Rainier, and St. Helens. We took about a 45 minute lunch break and regrouped for our descent.

Kyle and Mt. Hood from Sherrard Point

The trip back down the mountain was a little frustrating. It was longer than what we were originally planning for (or what our hiking book suggested) and steep declines are so hard on the knees! Plus my feet were KILLING me! I kept telling Kyle that I wanted to walk barefoot. He wouldn't let me, which I now realize was a good thing.

We want to go back to the summit of Larch Mountain, maybe make an even longer loop and go backpacking. We would also like to drive to the top for sunset one of these days.

Sweaty, tired, and ready to go home in front of Multnomah
Falls where we had started our hike 8.5 hours earlier.

This past week (on September 13th) we did a shorter, but MUCH harder hike than Larch called Table Mountain. Stay tuned for that post!
-Megan