Disappointment on Dog Mountain

I heard about Dog Mountain the first summer I moved to Oregon. It had a reputation for being brutal, everyone always talked about how much of a leg burner it was. In addition to the hard workout, it was also toted as having amazing views of the gorge. So it’s been a hike on my list for some time and I decided to finally check that box.

The day started off on the wrong foot. I had set my alarm for 5 am but for some reason, it didn’t go off and I woke up 30 minutes late. Then en route, my traffic navigation app said that the Bridge of the Gods was closed for a race so we had to take the slow way to the trail. Turns out the bridge was actually open ugh. Despite the drive taking 20 additional minutes, it was fine, we still got to the trailhead before it was super busy.

The hike started off uphill, no problem, I expected as much. After the first set of switchbacks, there is a sign telling you there are two choices to get to the summit - difficult and very difficult. 

Can you guess which one we picked? The very difficult trail wasn’t even the bad part, it was actually fine since we prefer to just go up instead of dealing with annoying switchbacks. It was hard and slow going but didn’t require much stopping since it was just steady uphill the whole time without any rock scrambling. We’ve definitely done worse. But honestly, it was boring. No views, just trees. It’s okay though, I mean we were climbing a mountain so the views would be epic at the top right?

We hit the first lookout and yeah, you’ve got a view of the gorge but I felt a bit underwhelmed.

So we kept going with the assumption the summit would be more breathtaking. Oh, how we were wrong. The summit was so overgrown that there wasn’t much of a view and the trail just sort of vanishes into the bushes. Just a small glimpse of the tip of Mount Hood through some trees. Are you telling me we just climbed 3000ft and had no view? What kind of twisted hike is this?

So we headed down and diverted to the difficult route back, hit just one viewpoint, realized it wasn’t any more amazing, and rated the hike 1.5 stars. 

Maybe we are being too harsh, I mean technically we did have views of the gorge. Maybe our boredom with the views was a result of having driven down the gorge so many times it’s no longer mind-blowing. 

Or perhaps it's something else entirely. We’ve hiked enough trails that we know what a good payoff looks like in terms of effort given. So when a hike has that much of a climb and makes the promise of views our expectations are quite high. Especially when there are other hikes in the gorge with more beautiful scenery for less effort.

So all in all, a great hike if you want sore glutes and a tired dog, but not so great if you want to be swept off your feet.

Distance Logged 6.5 mi

Ascent 2978 ft

Descent 2978 ft