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The Timberline Lodge is the last stop on the road that goes up the mountain. It is open year-round and provides one of the best vistas of northwest Oregon. If the lodge looks familiar, you may recognize it from Stanley Kubrik's 1980 film, The Shining (http://us.imdb.com/Details?0081505).
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Here's the view from the lodge's parking lot. Mt. Hood is part of the Cascade mountain range which extends from Oregon up into Washington. The Cascade mountains are all volcanoes (Mt. St. Helens is the most well known of them.)
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Here's a look at the summit of Mt. Hood from the parking lot near the Timberline day lodge. The day lodge is kind of a way station for skiiers and snowboarders. It's a wild place- a lot like the Cantina in Star Wars on busy days.
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Here's another look at the summit, this time from the first ski lift landing up from the lodge. Believe it or not there are actually about a hundred people skiing and boarding down the mountain in this photo. My digital camera just wasn't able to pick them up. Up at the top of the mountain you can see the volcano's lava plug dome (it's the exposed rock in the center). Volcanoes that develop plug domes like this one typically don't erupt again.
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This photo was also taken from the ski lift landing area, just looking the opposite way. The building on the left is a ski chateau that skiiers slide right through, just like cars at a service station. You can see the Timberline Lodge farther down the mountain. At almost 12,500 feet, Mt. Hood is Oregon's tallest mountain.
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About half an hour from the base of Mt. Hood is Multnomah Falls, located in the gorgeous Columbia River Gorge.
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There's a nice little park at the waterfall with a concession stand and a long trail that you can take all the way to the top. (Note: You should only take the trail if you're in very good physical condition- it's a lot longer than it looks!)
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The water spills down the side of the gorge, which the Columbia River has been carving through thick layers of basaltic lava for millions of years.
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