Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area - Best Hikes, Waterfalls & Overlooks (2023)
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- Опубліковано 11 кві 2023
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Visited March 28 & 29, 2023
The waterfalls are so beautiful! Thanks for sharing.
As a PNW person and local, I agree! The Columbia River Gorge deserves park status. There is an official campaign for it and for Mt Hood actually, called the Mt Hood National Park campaign, though it hasn't really received any real traction. But both the Gorge and Mt Hood are park worthy, and while the Gorge is fairly (reasonably) well protected, the greater Mt Hood region is extremely unprotected and has suffered many actual damaging impacts to its park qualities and pristine scenery. Notable examples of those has been the widening of the Mt Hood Highway by ODOT (first many decades ago when it destroyed the original scenic highway that in both roadside and bridge architecture was modeled after the Historic Columbia River Gorge Highway depicted in your video, and the more recent widening of sections to make it more freeway-like. The most notable being entirely new sections blasted out of the rock face near the Mirror Lake hike). The old highway has been overgrown as the new highway cut through it and broke it up. The old highway was a lot more windy and narrow, far more park-like and scenic. What's done is done, but if it becomes a national park, there may be hope to restore the old highway into a scenic bikeway like the Columbia River Gorge State Trail project that was completed a few years ago that revived old abandoned historic sections of the highway that the I-84 freeway bypassed.
Without any formal park or other protected status (like national monument or scenic area), the whole Mt Hood region, besides the various scattered wilderness areas, have been severely degraded and impacted by unsightly clear cuts and "improvements" done to the highways and ski parks (such as expanded parking lots-in fact, one of the major reasons for the road expansion was for winter ski traffic to Mt Hood Meadows and Timberline because of weekend ski traffic and congestion-stuff that can be alleviated if only they'd run a shuttle bus and encourage people (like via limited quota permits on winter weekends) to ski on weekdays over weekends). The roads and highways under a national park might also see more focus on road infrastructure that is more complimentary to the natural environment, like use of aesthetic stone-work roadside guards and more aesthetic bridges, like those they built for the old but now destroyed and abandoned historic Mt Hood Highway. WyEastblog website has a good article or two on this and the proposed Mt Hood State Scenic Trail to revive the old historic highway, anyway.
The Mt Hood regional trails and roads also suffer under heavy lack of funds and maintenance. The Badger Creek Wilderness on the east side especially suffers and numerous trails are only kept alive because of volunteers-though some have been revived and brought back, like the Old Vista Ridge Trail. A national park might see more focus on park like roadside overlooks. Maybe even the old abandoned stone shelters on the Timberline Trail could be rebuilt again-only a few survive, many have fallen apart and are now ruins.
That campaign for a Mt Hood National Park does include the Gorge too, but I am more in favor of splitting them as two adjacent parks. While they could arguably be together, like Olympic has both the coast section and the mountains/rainforests, I think lumping them together would dilute two very different natural wonders. If they were to be one unit though, I'd do it like Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks are combined. Two parks in one, under one joined title. So it would be: Mt Hood & Columbia River Gorge National Parks.
I was just out there a week ago. Wish I had found this two weeks ago! 🤣
i went for the first time today and yeah it needs to be a national park because its genuinely so stunning? I would even say equally as beautiful as yosemite!
I would agree! Thanks for watching 🙏🏻
Great video! Very nice looking waterfalls!
I noticed in your video that a section of trail that the author of this comment cleared and made it usable again,like 11years ago, was quite visable.6:53 On a rescent trip I again gave it some needed attention.Thanks for posting this video.
10:24 Foamer Shot!
Beautiful video! When you create a video of hikes on the Washington State side, be sure to include the Hamilton Mountain Trail, which starts at Beacon Rock State Park. Amazing Columbia River views.
Thank you! I’ve hiked some of Hamilton Mountain before, but never the full thing. Will be sure to check it out at some point!
@@TravelDash The hike is strenuous enough to get a good workout but not worth going all the way to the summit. The top of the Hamilton Mountain has no good views of anything. Mostly brushes blocking views and you turn around to go back down. The hike in my opinion is only good till the waterfalls where you can enjoy spending some time and may be swim and picnic.
This reminds me of how there are so many waterfalls in the finger lakes (Watkins Glen Robert Tremaine Taughannock falls etc) - have you gone there?
Not yet, but hoping to visit for the first time this year!
@@TravelDash nice man- i did them in the fall- I’d be happy to try and help give suggestions if u have questions. If ur passing through PA at all you also would like the poconos for (bushkill falls, ding man falls, raymondskill etc)
Can't they clear the brush at Womens Forum Park so we can better see the scene?
Certainly an area to be respected and preserved.
You can’t be criticized for stuttering or pausing with “uh” or other fill ins, but for me, the machine gun speed of delivery quickly became annoying. I do appreciate the time and effort you put into this video and make this comment reluctantly, but sincerely.
Thanks for the comment! I’ll keep that in mind in the future :)
Absolutely unbelievable. 🤍💖❤🧡💛💚💙💜🖤
Oh no, not a national park! Too many restrictions and lock away from human access and enjoyment. The national Scenic area struck a balance of preservation and respect for the rights of local residents that have been there for generations.
I don’t disagree entirely! I just wish something could be done about the human intervention within the gorge. Plus, it deserves to be respected and acknowledged to the extent of the greatest National Parks
@@TravelDash I'm a local (the Gorge is just 30 min away from me), and I think it absolutely needs to be a national park! And so does Mount Hood, as well as the Three Sisters in central Oregon (which if I could give it a name, I could call it "Cascade Volcanoes National Park", and include Broken Top, Mt Washington, Belknap Crater and lava flows, McKenzie Pass, Sparks Lake, Tamolich Pool, Sahlahie, and Koosah Falls, besides the Three Sisters themselves. A national park for the gorge could be a "park complex" system, a combination of a national park and national recreation area, such as North Cascades National Park, or like the Redwoods National and State Parks joint system. National park lands can also carve areas around Gorge towns.
^^^ I absolutely agree. Oregon seamlessly could have 3 more national parks from the Columbia River Gorge, Three Sisters Wilderness, and Eagle Cap Wilderness in the Willowa Mountains. Oregon is underrepresented.@@NatureShy