A few Mount Hood favorites

After fourteen years of exploration, I’ve amassed plenty of photos from on Mount Hood. Sunsets. Hiking trails. Kayaking and canoeing on Trillium Lake and Lost Lake. Timberline Lodge. Cooper Spur. The summit.

Photo of climbers on the summit of Mount Hood by Daryl Houtman

The mountain is incredibly photogenic. Of course, what you’re doing on the mountain and who you’re with has a big impact too. What follows are a few of my very favorite Mount Hood images.

This one’s been published elsewhere, but to me it’s one of the most unique images of the mountain I’ve ever seen with my own eyes. Four of us were climbing the standard South Side route of Mount Hood in June 2010, and as we approached Crater Rock, the sun began to rise and the moon began to shrink. In the early morning light, the mountain’s shadow was cast upon the valley sky down below, and the nearly full moon darkened under an unexpected lunar eclipse.

You can’t see the mountain in this photo, but it’s there in the background, way off in the distance above the trees. This shot is from the banks of the Muddy Fork, a small but beautiful river that drains from the Sandy Glacier on Mount Hood and eventually joins the Sandy River, which itself emanates from the mountain’s Reid Glacier. We stumbled upon some great campsites along the Muddy Fork, and for four years now have made it a multi-annual outing. We love it, and obviously, Oliver, my Black Lab, does too . . .

This one, to me, shows just how photogenic Mount Hood is. We’d headed to the mountain for a fairly routine visit. Just drove up when Spencer, my son, was a few weeks old, hung out in a Steiner Cabin, and paid a quick visit to Timberline Lodge. I stepped out of the car, walked up a steep snowbank, and took a few seemingly forgettable pictures of the mountain from a spot that serves most tourists well. But when we got home and I looked at my pictures from the day, I felt like I’d really gotten something.