I've been wanting to hike in the direction of Mt. Hood. We've been to many parks in the Portland area and at the coast, but not east of Portland. So I researched some hikes and came up with a hike to Ramona Falls in the Mt. Hood National Forest. I wanted to go in that direction before the snows hit that area. My research on the app "All Trails" told me that it is a 6.9 mile loop trail located near Rhododendron, Oregon, off of Highway 26. "The falls drops 120 feet, cascading and splitting into ever smaller fingers of water broken up by the hexagonal columns of basalt at the base of the cliff." Elevation gain of 1100 feet. It said to plan 4-6 hours to complete. And there was a warning, there is no longer a bridge to cross Sandy River-you will need to cross logs. And it also said in the comments that after you cross Sandy River that the trail can be hard to pick up again. With our directions and information in hand we set off late September for Ramona Falls.
One of the things we should have done on the way up was to type Ramona Falls Trailhead, instead of Ramona Falls, into the Google Maps app. Ms Google took us up as close to the Falls as she could get, on some dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and announced "you have arrived!" It was a good thing we passed some road workers about 1/2 mile back and could turn around and ask where the trailhead was because we had no cell service. So Ms Google didn't get any second chances. And speaking of chances, what are the chances that we would find help in the middle of nowhere? So with Someone watching out for us, and armed with our new directions, we found the trailhead.
The trail and the falls were everything that we read about. Pictures do not do it justice, especially pictures from a cell phone. Someday we might get a nice camera, but for now we will have to remember everything from our cell phone pictures.
The bridge was indeed gone and logs were the best way to cross the Sandy River. I suppose we could have waded in but it seemed slippery and a bit deep, and we don't like hiking in wet clothes. Crossing on the log wasn't to bad, just don't look down! And, yes, the trail was a bit difficult to find again but we did and continued on.
We had a "friend" join us for a while on our hike. He didn't seem to be in a hurry.
Ramona Falls were beautiful, all the descriptions that I read about were accurate. I saw spring pictures of them where the water had a greater flow, but this was still impressive. We ate lunch there, enjoying the view, and we were the only ones around for a while.
The trail to the falls were next to the Sandy River and the views were nice. We took the loop to the north to return to the trailhead. It was nice to see different things on the way back. We followed a creek for a while and there were many basalt cliffs nearby.
On the way back we saw an awesome view of Mt Hood.
All in all our hike took us about 5 hours. We stopped for lunch and for lots of pictures. The hike was not difficult to complete, the elevation gain was easy to manage. I did notice that some of the hikers that started out from the trailhead were older and they didn't feel comfortable crossing Sandy River on the log. These people must have been disappointed. I hope someday that the bridge will be built again over the river because I'm sure these people could have handled the rest of the trail. It was a great day for us and I'd recommend this hike!
