Attempted to make our way to this trail head Saturday and had to turn around 2.5 miles up the 10 mile unpaved FR48. Unsure if it experienced a particularly brutal winter, but the road is in awful shape-- probably one of the worst I've ever driven on. Would only attempt to go up if you have a very high clearance vehicle (my CR-V did not cut it).
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nat.onthego on Heart Lake via Lily Basin Trail
Hi! Can you expand a bit on the roads condition? I’m hoping to go in July & am taking my Kia Sportage, which had pretty good clearance but isn’t Awd/4wd, so want to make sure I’m preparing myself for success, since Mt. Hood NFS deemed the road as passable (albeit with a note that “a short quarter mile section where only one lane is clear”)? Thanks so much!
Posted by:
nat.onthego on Jun 23, 2025 07:30 PM
meanderingmongoose on Heart Lake via Lily Basin Trail
For sure! There were lots of really big pot holes that were across the whole road/unavoidable, and the foliage around the road is very overgrown and made it super narrow (my car is soo scratched now which is fine but also, not ~great~ lol). Only comparison I have to how narrow it was would be the trailhead to summit lake (at least when I last drove it in 2021). I’d say a lot of the road that we drove on *is* one lane, there’s no way you could pass a vehicle safely. There’s a point about ~2 miles in where one side of the road is pretty washed out and the other isn’t, so we were leaning sideways… maybe it got better past the fork where we managed to turn around, but I wasn’t gonna risk damaging my car. Again, could be that it wouldn’t feel so brutal in a vehicle with higher clearance and better suspension meant for roads like that! Alas I have learned the limits of my humble CRV haha. I hope this helps!
Posted by:
meanderingmongoose on Jun 23, 2025 07:57 PM