Wind Mountain

Wind Mountain. A Timeless Grandeur. If you are admiring the view upriver to Wind Mountain, you're in good company. Travelers throughout history have been awed by the grandeur of the steep cliffs and unique mountain formations of the Columbia River Gorge. Early journal entries from weary pioneers of the 1880s (sic), jaded from months of hard travel and jittery about the Cascade rapids below, were inspired to make journal entries about the beauty of this waterway. , The tall, cone-shaped peak on the river's shore to the east is Wind Mountain. Whirlwinds blow in fury about this mountain, and a cloud "hat" can often be seen on its top. Local lore suggests that Wind Mountain may once have been a spirit quest site, where Native Americans would vision quest for a lifelong guardian spirit. , ... the mountains through which the river passes... are high broken, rocky,... and in many places exhort very romantic romantic scenes" -- William Clark, 1806 (Lewis and Clark Expedition) , The fires of the natives blazed among the woody glens, the light canoe skimmed the waters near the shore, the winds groaned over the mountain tops, the cascades sang from cliff to cliff, the loon shouted and dove beneath the shining wave, it was a wild, almost unearthly scene, in the deep gorge of the Columbia." Thomas J. Farnham, 1843 (Farnham was employed by publisher Horace Greeley to write about the frontier) , "I was most impressed by the Columbia River banks. What a lovely country. A new panorama comes into view every turn." Honoré-Timothée Lempfrit, 1848 (Lempfrit was a Catholic missionary to the Pacific Northwest in the mid-1800s)