Wahtum Lake is a lake in

Hood River County Hood River County is one of the 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2020 census, the population was 23,977. The county seat is Hood River. The county was established in 1908 and is named for the Hood River, a tributary of th ...

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

, United States, in the Mark O. Hatfield Wilderness of the

Mount Hood National Forest The Mount Hood National Forest is a U.S. National Forest in the U.S. state of Oregon, located east of the city of Portland and the northern Willamette River valley. The Forest extends south from the Columbia River Gorge across more than of fore ...

. "Wahtum" comes from the

Sahaptin language Sahaptin or Shahaptin, endonym Ichishkin, is one of the two-language Sahaptian branch of the Plateau Penutian family spoken in a section of the northwestern plateau along the Columbia River and its tributaries in southern Washington, northern Ore ...

, and means "pond' or "body of water.". The largest lake within the boundaries of the Columbia River Gorge, it is the source of the East Fork of Eagle Creek, and at is the deepest lake in the Mount Hood National Forest. At an elevation of , the lake is located in a

cirque A (; from the Latin word ') is an amphitheatre-like valley formed by glacial erosion. Alternative names for this landform are corrie (from Scottish Gaelic , meaning a pot or cauldron) and (; ). A cirque may also be a similarly shaped landform ...

formed by

glacial erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distin ...

. Less than 0.25 miles from a trailhead reachable by paved road, Wahtum Lake is a popular recreation destination. Several campsites exist at the trailhead and there are backcountry sites on the shore of the lake itself. A dense network of trails exists around the lake, with several leading down to the

Columbia River The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, C ...

. The Pacific Crest Trail wraps around Wahtum Lake, while the Eagle Creek Trail #440 — the most popular trail in the Gorge — has its upper terminus at Wahtum Lake.

References

Columbia River Gorge Lakes of Hood River County, Oregon Lakes of Oregon {{HoodRiverCountyOR-geo-stub