Beacon Rock State Park - Hamilton Mountain, Beacon Rock State Park - Hardy Creek — Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2025

Hamilton Mountain Trail is closed at the parking lot due to a landslide. However, you can still access the trail by walking up the road (gated) to the campground and start at the Hadley trailhead. Since part of Hamilton trail had washed out, I was surprised how well the Hadley and Hamilton trails were with all the storms we've had. Both Rodney and Hardy Falls were gorgeous and flowing quite nicely. I continued my hike up towards Hamilton Summit via Hamilton Mountain trail. About a mile or a mile and a half before the summit, the trail started to get icy in spots. I was glad I had poles for balance and traction. The summit was very windy, and there were great views of Mount Hood, Mount Adams, and Table Mountain. It was such a clear day, I decided to continue exploring and extend my hike by heading towards Hamilton Saddle. The saddle was very windy and I almost lost my hat! I continued past the saddle towards the Upper Hardy Creek Trail. The trail had a bit of snow (no need for spikes), but very manageable to walk on. Parts of the trail were overgrown but easy to navigate and follow. As I looped down and headed towards the bridge trail, there was a section of the Upper Hardy Creek trail that had a number of very large trees down. These looked like they fell during the recent windstorm. I very carefully made my way over them as I couldn't even see the ground beneath me, and again was very glad I had poles to feel around and for balance. I would not recommend walking up Hamilton Mountain via Upper Hardy Creek trail as it would be harder to navigate around the trees since you would be climbing over them on an uphill. These obstacles only blocked a small stretch of the trail and does not impact access to Don's Ridge Cut Off trail or the Bridge trail. I returned to the Hamilton Mountain trail via Hardy Creek trail, which did have a few trees to climb or duck under - way easier to get around these than the big trees on the Upper trail. My Garmin watch clocked 12.4 miles, but I saw that my GPS pinged all over the place on the upper trail. I suspect it was about 10 miles total with hiking up to Hadley trail, exploring little beacon rock, and viewing the falls/pool of the winds.