In late June, the attraction here is the wide-open view down the Columbia from the Mosier plateau. The wet season was long gone, so the stream flow in the Mosier Creek falls is down and there are many more spectacular falls further west in the Gorge. Most of the wildflowers had faded, but on a sunny morning the view of the Gorge was still spectacular. As noted in the WTA hike description, the Coyote Wall is just on the other side of the river. The Wash. State DNR reports that the Coyate Wall is the head escarpment of a large landslide where a large block of Columbia River Basalt rotated and slid towards the river. For those of you that are geologically inclined, the scenery is rife with synclines and anticlines, all visible due to the exposed basalt layers.
And despite the hike description's claim that it is a 3.5-mile round trip, we found that the up and back clocked in only 2.4 miles. Perhaps the missing 1.1 miles would appear if we had completed the entire loop going down the Mosier Plateaus from the high point, but we could not see the point of adding gratuitous elevation loss to our stroll.
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