Miles: 1.4 miles RT
Elevation Gain/Highest: 512ft/846ft
Map: Green Trails No 428s Columbia River Gorge West, my GAIA
Favorite Eats After Hike: Crush Cider, Walking Man Brewery, Backwoods Brewery, Thunder Island Brewing, Cascade Locks Ale House, Farm Stand Natural Foods, or just Pack A Cooler. You can learn more about these places in my Must Hike Must Eat Eating Out Guide.
Find out current conditions and as always, practice Leave No Trace. Pretty please.
Hike Details:
Beacon Rock is a 850 foot cinder cone along the Columbia River Gorge located in Beacon Rock State Park. A short but steep trail sweeps up the side, mostly on boardwalks attached to the vertical rock. The viewpoint at the summit offers views up and down the river. A stop here makes for a great leg stretcher for a road trip along SR 14 between Vancouver and Eastern Washington.
My hike:
12/12/2021
For our weekend on the Gorge we car camped at the Beacon Rock State Park, there are two nice spots at the boat launch that offer a real bathroom. This was the first time I stayed long enough to enjoy to walk around the launch area which had nice views of the river and surrounding mountains topped with new snow!
After our lazy morning sipping jet boil coffee, we drove over to the trailhead for Beacon Rock. We debated hiking from the boat launch but the weather was so sloppy we knew it would be a shoe drencher to take that trail so we wimped out.
We had the climb and summit to ourselves, guessing the snow level to be about 1000 feet on the other side of the Gorge. We also thought about how the rock once only protruded 150 feet from the water level. This was my third (fourth?) time on Beacon Rock and I noticed even more some of the older architectural structures along the trail’s route. We thought about how people used to climb this with no rails and wondered if they even had a rope along the rock to guide them. This was also the first time we noticed there was a boot path off the opposite side from the paved summit and wondered what kind of person would head down that way!
Reading more of the kiosk information, it was interesting to learn that Clark originally called it “Beaten Rock” before it grew into its current, more purposeful “Beacon Rock” name. Original tribes called it Che-Che-op-tin which means “the navel of the world” and it even held the name of Castle Rock by later colonizers.
12/28/2019
Our first hike of the weekend was here to Beacon Rock, my husband had never been. We parked on the west side and started on the trail that leads towards the state park itself then cut across on an established boot path to meet the regular trail at the first bridge.
I love this trail for the intricate twist of switchbacks used to create a trail up the rock face, a mix of wood, steel piping and patterned iron fencing. You can almost imagine what it must have been like to have been some of the first people to climb it without the use of ropes. It reminds you of such trails as the West Rim to Angel’s Landing. Again, I was glad to be doing it after the early morning frost and ice had melted, those wood boardwalks would be quite slick otherwise.
GAIA had us topping out at 812 feet and we had the interesting phenomena that looking west we had sun and looking east we had darker skies. Clearly we would be hiking with the threat of rain later on today.
Our total distance was 1.4 miles, it is always fun to see the zigzag design the track makes for this hike!
1/7/2018
A friend and I were down on the Gorge for the weekend, staying in Carson, and with the grey skies and late start decided to do Beacon Rock which had been closed when I was there last April due to trail damage.
It seemed hard to believe that it was a mile up to the top of this famous Gorge lava plug but when you realize you have 53 switchbacks, it all makes sense! With most of the hikes on the Oregon side closed due to last year’s wildfire, there were quite a few folks out on the trail despite the weather. I was a little nervous about hiking with the wet conditions because most of the trail is either carved into the side of the rock or wood platforms but it wasn’t bad and there were plenty of handrails.
The wind at the top kept us from lingering a long time but it was nice to look down the length of the Columbia. The low hanging clouds obscured some of the landscape on the other side but we could still see evidence of the devastation just below them: layers of rock and waterfalls frozen over exposed due to the lack of vegetation. All in all, a good leg stretcher after being in the car from Seattle!
No pictures, unfortunately, I had left my phone at home. You can read about our weekend here: A Girls Hiking Weekend Getawayon The Columbia River Gorge.
Directions: The Rock is located 34 miles east on SR 14 from I-205 in Vancouver, WA. The parking lot is on the south (right) side of the highway and there is room for about 30 cars. There are two trails, the western one leads to the state park proper, the eastern one for Beacon Rock itself. The eastern part of the lot has a privy and picnic table. A Discover Pass is needed.
For another easy hike across the street in the state park, check out Hadley-Little Beacon Rock Loop Trail. And for more hikes along the Columbia Gorge, visit my Southwest Washington-Columbia River Gorge page.
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