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Mt. Hood's Clear Lake Hike Worth the Trip
Mt Hood's Clear Lake a Popular Destination
With the recent heavy smoke Central Oregon has been experiencing from the Bedrock Fire, we expanded our hiking locations to include the Mt. Hood area. Last Saturday we enjoyed the hike to Clear Lake, a popular hike located just off Hwy 26 by Skibowl in the Mt Hood National Forest. We started our hike just after 9:00 am after our two hour drive from Bend, and found the parking lot practically full. The hike to Clear Lake was well marked and typically is an easy to moderate in and out loop trail around the lake with roughly 300 feet of elevation gain. 
However, past the lake, which has lovely views of Mt. Hood on a clear day, there is an option to hike up Tom, Dick and Harry Mountain in the Salmon - Huckleberry Wilderness, a trip that provides for over 1700 feet of elevation gain and lengthens the total hike to over 8 miles.
Upon reaching the rock filled overlook, we continued on another 1/2 mile to the actual summit on Tom Dick Peak, which we discovered is part of SkiBowl recreation area, clearly not part of the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness. Our GPS showed an option to hike down through the ski area, which we did. This involved traversing several diamond runs and connecting with the unused mountain bike trail. Our hike down to the Skibowl buildings by the parking lot was extremely steep and what took over 4.5 miles to gain in elevation we lost in just over 1 mile. We do not recommend this route for most people. However, it was a beautiful day with wonderful views of Mt Hood and a pleasure to be out of smokey Central Oregon.
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