Smith Rock State Park is an amazing place! Apparently rock climbers come here from all over the world. I can see why.
It was raining everywhere but Smith Rock so I headed east. Drove through 2 hours of rain, fog, snowy hillsides to come out to the desert to find beautiful dry skies. The clouds were nice for adding drama to the lighting. An hour into the hike the wind picked up and was quite gusty at times.
I didn't see too many people and the ones I did see were running the trail. The grade on most of the trails was pretty much straight up/down and on top of that there are rocks on the trails that make them very slippery. Not sure how anyone runs them.
I had wanted to hike the Chute trail to Misery Ridge, north on Mesa Verde, continue on Summit Loop to Burma Road, then take a trail Sullivan called a steep switchback down to the river, over to Wolf Tree to the River Trail around to Mesa Verde again and back up and down Misery Ridge. After going up Misery Ridge, I didn't think I wanted to do that again, so I considered just going around to Mesa Verde and then turning around. But, all my photo stops meant I was going slower than usual and I was concerned it was still raining in the pass, so I just hiked a short ways on the River Trail. Enough to see the climbers! No rain on the way home. A super day!
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| Smith Rock and the Crooked River |
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| heading up Misery Ridge |
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| looking down from the top of the Ridge (north east) |
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| more from the top |
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| heading across the top of the ridge and looking southwest |
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| Monkey Face and Crooked River |
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| a user trail off of Summit Trail Loop took me to this view |
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| from Summit Trail Loop looking southwest (Black Butte) |
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| taking that little steep switchback trail led to being in a canyon surrounded by interesting rocks |
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| climbers on the River Trail |
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| from the River Trail |
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