An Evolving Time Capsule Awaits Around the Craggy Peak of Oregon’s Tallest Mountain

A trip to Hood feels like retreating, or stopping time altogether, and choosing instead to live inside the slow drip of mountain hours.

There’s a reason Stanley Kubrick chose to open his classic 1980 horror film The Shining with a sweeping shot of Mount Hood and Timberline Lodge. The dense, dark woods—full of evergreens and punctuated by the craggy peak of Oregon’s tallest mountain—are decidedly ominous.
But put the image of an ax-toting Jack Nicholson aside, and this sweeping wilderness is something much richer and more expansive. The ancient history of the area, evident in the thousands of acres blanketed under dewy moss, invites exploration. It also bears remembering that anywhere you stand, swim or sip beer here, you are on Chinook land.
Whether it’s a stop at Joe’s—the checkered time capsule from the ’70s—on the way to the mountain to pick up a true old-fashioned doughnut, or the view from beneath the medieval vaulted beams of Timberline Lodge, a trip to Hood feels like retreating, or stopping time altogether, and choosing instead to live inside the slow drip of mountain hours—where moments are marked by paddle strokes in a lake and rotations of bicycle tires.
However you choose to spend your time, the sweet scent of pine is sure to follow you home.

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