Panorama Point

Crow and the Tatooshes

Day 4: I'm going to play the "little old lady" card here and tell you how it was in the Good Old Days. Thirty or forty years ago, you could go up to Paradise on a summer weekday, park your car in the upper lot and head off hiking a confusing network of dusty trails. By the time you'd reached your destination, you might have passed a few other hikers, but if you'd left early enough (like say at 8 o'clock), you might not have encountered anyone until you started back. Weekends were different, of course, because everybody and their dog (no, not in the Good Old Days...let's say "everybody" instead and leave the dog at home)...everybody came out on the weekends, especially if the weather was nice. There would be so many people on the weekend that you might have to park in the lower lot if you didn't get there before 1O AM. You could still find pockets of solitude once you were on the trail because everyone dispersed as soon as they hit trail intersections, but yes, the trails were more populated on pleasant weekend days. As population figures rose, so did visitation. More social trails developed through the lovely wildflower meadows: paths to rocks and overlooks which in truth were not all that much different than the established by-paths only a few feet away. The Park found it necessary to take steps to protect the meadows, so they paved some of the lower trails to try to keep people from venturing off on their own.

I don't recall exactly when the paving began because I largely avoided Paradise, preferring to hike in places where I was less likely to encounter another human. In fact, I usually only used a trail to get to a jumping-off point, departing from it to enter designated wilderness where foot traffic was regulated by your ability to navigate with map and compass. The next time I returned to Paradise (an event occasioned by duty), the amount of asphalt laid on the Mountain's shoulder appalled me. Paradise is being "loved to death" by thousands of visitors, hundreds each day, many of whom ignore the regulations to traipse across fragile alpine meadows, often with their dog in the lead. When someone asks me where they should go in the Park, I tell them, "Not Paradise. They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot," recalling Joni Mitchell's song, "Big Yellow Taxi."

Historic Panorama Point restroom

If your goal is to get somewhere specific from Paradise (as opposed to taking a wildflower walk), your best option is to go in the shoulder seasons of spring or fall. In the first instance, you'll need snowshoes or skis; in the second, solitude can still be had if you're willing to brave the weather. When a new virtual geocache was allowed to be established at Panorama Point's historic restroom, it gave me a reason for an autumn hike. Some snow had already fallen at Paradise and the forecast was for more this weekend, so I went up on Tuesday, the leading edge of the front building a stack of lenticular cloud pancakes on the summits of the Mountain and Mount Adams in the distance. The distance to Pan Point is 1.7 miles. The elevation gain is 1700'. Do the math. One thousand feet per mile is considered "steep" by most hikers, and the steepest portion of the Skyline Trail is that first asphalted three-quarters of a mile straight out of the parking lot. Above the Dance Floor, it rolls back a bit and the ascent becomes a series of rock stairs interspersed with short stretches of sandy soil, but at no point does it offer relief from lifting your body with each progressive step.

At Pan Point (as we lovingly call it), you are afforded a full view of the Tatoosh Range to the south and, if you're lucky, you may be able to spot Mount Hood and/or Jefferson as well as Adams and St. Helens. In my case, Adams and Hood were out, but St. Helens was hidden by cloud. Wind, pushed by the front, whipped across the ridge and added an additional 15 degrees of chill to the nip one would expect at 7100' on a cold autumn day. I abandoned plans to continue up to Pebble Creek or to loop through Golden Gate, retreating the way I had come and making...yes, even under threatening skies...making 44 visitor contacts before I got down.