Hiking Mirror Lake, OR

What a perfect way to start the official first day of winter!

Mirror lake is a fairly easy loop trial located at the base of Mt hood. Its about 2miles in and 2 back out. It took us about an hour each way. We arrived at the parking lot for the trailhead around noon on a Monday and it was pretty empty. This trail has over 5 beautiful bridges you must cross and the waterfalls under them have so much water this time of year.

Once I saw the woodsy vibe mixed with the snow I was so excited. We wore normal winter hiking shoes for this hike. No snow shoes required at least this time because the snow was pretty compacted. Only around the lake did we fall into some knee high snow.

Once we reached the lake we were shocked by how beautiful it was. You could hear birds rustling around in the trees and you could hear the wind in the trees above you.

It was a little surreal being around the mostly frozen lake. We have never seen this lake in person before so we had no idea where the land ended and the lake began. We spent awhile around the lake, just taking it all in and of course taking pictures too.

The only scary part about this hike was on the back side of the lake where not to many people were brave enough to walk over so the snow wasn’t to compact. You could see in certain spots where the trail was washed out because there was so much snow melt and snow! I would say there was maybe a foot of water we were freely walking over and at least 6 inches of snow of top of that. We were walking so carefully and no one fell in!

We didn’t realize what time it was so we quickly left the lake and power walked back to the car. There was a little ice we ran into on this hike. Most of it being around the lake but the ice on the trail was only a problem going back since its down hill. Just go slowly and you should be ok. Over all this hike was beautiful and Im so happy we waited till winter to do it!

My tips:

*If you want to hike this trail, get to the parking lot early on weekends and even earlier in the summer months

*No snow shoes or poles needed if there wasn’t to much fresh snow fall before your hike

*Its a pretty easy hike with 600ft elevation gain