Beacon Rock State Park - Hamilton Mountain — Sunday, Jun. 23, 2013

Southwest Washington > Columbia River Gorge - WA

I have been wanting to do this hike for a while now. I was not disappointed. This was a great hike! Beautiful wildflowers; yellow, purple, orange, and white. We stopped at the Pool of Winds on the way up. Totally worth it! Such an awesome waterfall!! See picture below. The hike was mostly through the woods and then when almost finished opened up and amazing views. I would not recommend doing this hike on a cloudy day as the best part for us was the views. The hardest part is at the very end but worth the climb! We stayed at the top and enjoyed lunch and some great views. We did not go the correct way back down. You are supposed to take Hardy trail (I believe) and we didn't-We kept to a different trail which landed us in an empty parking lot. Luckily, in the parking lot there was a map so, we hiked down to the main road and from the road to the correct parking area. Be careful with this as I just read someone else did this too. We weren't too worried about it as it added on extra miles for us but, would have preferred to stay on the trail. We did the loop so we didn't know which way to stay on the way down as we didn't come from that way up. It was a great hike and I would absolutely do it again!