Railroad Grade, Park Butte — Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018

We day hiked to both the Park Butte Lookout and up the Railroad Grade trail on October 10.27.2018.

ROAD: The last few miles are in decently good condition for an NF road, with potholed areas that are navigable in a low-clearance car.

TRAILHEAD: NW Forest Pass or America the Beautiful for parking. There is an outhouse at the trailhead (and it even had toilet paper!), and even a few little picnic areas at the start of the trail. There were even a few designated hiker camp sites at the trailhead (this is the first time I've noticed such a thing). 

TRAIL: We left the trailhead around 7.50 a.m.; catching a glimpse or two of alpenglow on Baker as we headed up the forested section, ogling mushrooms on the way.

Winter temperatures are definitely here, and the world glittered with frost both around and underfoot. Sections of trail were slick, especially near streams where the rocks had an invisible coating of super thin ice. We skirted around iced over areas wherever possible and crunched through almost-constant heave frost patches; these conditions slowed us down a bit. Poles were helpful but traction devices would not be of any aid.

There was one section at a boulder field crossing where we got confused. On our return we noticed there were ribbons tied to trees where the trail enters the woods on either side - ORANGE on the side closer to the trailhead and PINK on the opposite side. If I had paid more attention to previous trip reports I would have noticed this before we got-off trail... :p 

RIVER CROSSING: We opted to cross nearer to the horse ford rather than up where the hiker bridge used to be. We did not have much trouble getting across (despite slightly icy rocks) and water level was manageable. This might change depending on weather... 

We headed to Park Butte lookout first. Views opened up after the Railroad Grade junction (the junctions on these trails were marked with labeled posts, which was nice). We met a few other ladies who had done a sunrise hike up to the lookout, which sounded like a fab idea for another day. The grade never got crazy steep, and we were up at the lookout a little after 10 (I think). It was a bit breezy but we had the lookout to ourselves.

After eating lunch, we descended a little and headed over to the meadows with tarns to explore a little and see if we could find the perfect mirror reflection of Baker we'd seen in so many photos. Well, we found the spot but the tarns were frozen over. Oops. It was still lovely.

We pottered around the tarns for a bit before heading back down to the junction with Railroad Grade and heading up towards the glacier. This trail had quite a few nice looking tent pads along the way (more so than I think I've seen on any other hike!).

We gained the ridge and oohed and aahed at the sheer drop off on the other side into the glacial moraine (this trail goes on the list of things I don't want to fall off of).

The glacier beckoned and we continued heading uphill. I'm not exactly how far we made it before we had to turn around (boo time constraints :( ), but I believe we were near High Camp, in an area with a beautiful green tarn (that was also frozen over) and a good view of some of the crevasses. Weather was moving in and the blue skies we had were turning to grey when we decided we had to turn around. The ridge was chillingly windy, but the backdrop was dramatic and beautiful. We descended much more quickly compared to our uphill journey, and made it out to the car a little after 3 p.m.

These two trails were definitely a beautiful way to end an amazing October in the PNW!