1.3 hr
Overview
Green Point Mountain, one of the high points on Waucoma Ridge, offers excellent views across to Mount Defiance and Mount Adams. This loop hike takes you to the summit and then down to loop up into the lush old growth bottomlands below North Lake before reaching Rainy Lake and the trailhead. Past the A-frame outhouse at the Rainy Lake Campground, take the Rainy-Wahtum Trail #409, actually the road bed of the old Wahtum Lake Road. Cross a boggy area blooming with cut-leaf bugbane in summer and hike up to old wooden gate posts on either side of the road. Two hundred yards from the posts, you'll pass the almost imperceptible junction with the abandoned Black Lake Trail (see the Black Lake from Rainy Lake Hike). Head up on a wet trail and pass below a cliff face before crossing a talus slope rimmed with vine maple. Reach the Gorton Creek-Herman Creek Cutoff-Rainy Wahtum Trail Junction, and note the old World War II signal hut at the beginning of the Herman Creek Cutoff Trail. Make a sharp right onto the Gorton Creek Trail #408. Swish gradually up through huckleberry bushes in montane forest. Pass a rock outcropping and veer towards the eastern rim of Green Point Mountain. Heading up over the summit of the mountain, you will find a couple of viewpoints past the lodgepole pines to the right offering expansive vistas to Mount Defiance, Mount Adams and Goat Rocks. Look back also to Mount Hood. Steep andesite cliffs and scree lead down to Rainy Lake. Continue on down the ridge crest in a bear-grass understory to reach the four-way Gorton Creek-Green Point Ridge-North Lake Trail Junction. Keep straight on the Green Point Ridge Trail (for a shorter loop, see the Rainy Lake Loop Hike). It’s an uphill grade and then you make a long descent. Reach the Green Point Ridge-Plateau Cutoff Trail Junction, and keep right. These are dry mountain hemlock, silver fir, noble fir woods. As you descend, more Douglas-firs appear. Enter a dense thicket of silver firs and come to the Wyeth-Green Point Ridge Trail Junction and go right.
Trail Stats
0.0 km
388 m
0 m
0 m
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Photos
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