A friend and I slogged our way up to the Park Butte lookout. The bridge over Rock Creek was washed out in last fall's flooding and the creek has changed course. I forded the creek a month ago and it was pretty dicey then with the glacial melt and hot weather. On 9-14-04, the creek looked nothing like it had a month previous. It changed course again and was swifer and deeper from the rain. We planned to stay 2 nights but came out after only one because it began snowing and then rained all night. We were worried about the creek rising. Sure enough, it was pretty scarey crossing. We had the whole area and lookout to ourselves. There were just 2 other cars at the trail head and those were for workers replacing the wooden slabs on the first part of the trail. Today as we came out, we passed 4 guys and their dog (the dog had to be carried over the creek) who were headed up to the look-out. Good thing we left when we did! It would have been a very unpleasant night in a tent, cold, wet and windy (12 mph at the top). The look-out is awesome. It is first come - first serve and very popular. Unfortunately for us, there were no views of much of anything other than fog and a few trees.
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