Nesmith Point more like Nesmith Disappoint

Well they can't all be winners.

The Summit of Nesmith Point

Nesmith Point is a very high point on the edge of the Yeon Mountain area, which is a really cool area filled with steep canyons and large rock pillars. Nesmith is mostly known in Oregon hiker circles as a "training" hike for mountain climbers. The view from the top isn't all that special, and getting there is difficult. It's more about the work. Nesmith is the treadmill time you spend trying to get ready for better things. That's fine, because sometimes those moments can be enjoyable in their own right.

This doesn't bother me much in most things. Sometimes it's about the journey and not the endpoint. As it turns out, Nesmith Point is a shitty, boring journey.

Nesmith has no charm. It's just steep climbing through thick jungle on rocks for 5 miles, then going back the same way. Even with lowered expectations I was pretty let down. Nesmith feels like a hike that should be amazing when you look at it on a map and consider it's route, but ends up tedious and unfun with little to no reward. Keeley was not with me for this hike, she wasn't feeling well and hung out by Elowah falls instead.

The Nesmith Disappoint (Which I will refer to it as henceforth) trail starts at the Elowah trailhead after maybe 50 feet. A sign points up. The trail goes up fairly gently for a little under a mile, meandering through the woods to reach the entrance point to Nesmith box canyon. The canyon is narrow and when you get views of it through the trees, pretty cool. But honestly for the next two miles you are constantly switchbacking (Some are barely 10 feet long) slowly, ever so slowly up the stupid mountain. It's boring and steep, the worst combination. Some of the steepest hikes I've done are also some of the most fun to do, being on ridges or scrambles. Nesmith is just cramped jungle switchbacks. The whole way.

Nesmith Point Trail

Average level of steep climbing in the canyon

Parts of the trail would be a nightmare to re-route if a landslide took it out.

Eventually you'll make it out of the canyon and the steep rocky walls and hit Corky's Corner, where the trail crests the rim and exits the canyon with a mild view of Waukena point across the way. From here, it's another half mile of climbing through brushy nothingness. It flattens out for a little while, but soon enough you are climbing again. Eventually you hit an old road and from here it's another 500 feet to the site of an old lookout and the "views".

The views aren't bad per say, they are just limited. There is no wide angle with panoramic options, it's a very select section of visible views down a landslide. You can wander around down past the top and get a few different angles, including one of St. Helens over Hardy Ridge and Beacon Rock and one looking east towards Portland and Larch Mtn, but nothing wide and open like most gorge viewpoints.

The Summit. Yeon Mtn in the lower left foreground, Silver Star Mtn far in the upper right distance

Survey marker at the top

An old outhouse by the summit. A lookout was once perched here, the outhouse is presumably a relic from that time. 

St. helens

Towards Portland

Larch Mountain

Yeon Mtn low foreground, Devil's rest as the little bump behind it, Coastal Mountains way in the distance

Stump with a cool hairdo

Hamilton and Table mountains

Now it's time to go back down that rocky, steep mess. My feet felt worse on mile 8 than they did at the end of last week's 15 mile mastery.

I'm glad I did it because I can mark it off my map, and that's about my only satisfaction. Nesmith Disappoint. You can get the conditioning this hike gives you in many other places in the gorge with much better experiences. Save this for a wet, overcast day so the heat doesn't get you and all you want is exercise.

The one pleasure I took from the hike was watching Beacon rock go from a huge sight to the size of a pebble.

Beacon Rock is a little over 800 feet high, Hardy Ridge almost 3000 feet. The second viewpoint is just under 3800 feet up

The trail to Nesmith

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