6/8. Saturday. Sunny yet not hot. Saddle Mt 1630', ~5 miles RT. The trail is not as easy as the statistics suggests. Loose rocks. The forest service put metal mesh on trail to help with tracking. Doesn't look natural. There's also a fence on the very top, and a cement block to sit on (the remnant of a former lookout). Very popular (~100 people today?). 
A good flower hike at this time of the year. Can be a couple of weeks earlier or later for different waves of flowers. Even as we drove in, Cow Parsnip line the road. Flowers ranging from spring ones (even bleeding heart) to summer varieties (penstimon, paintbrush). Varied terrain: wet forest (monkey flowers) to exposed rocks. Mary informed us that it's created by undersea volcanic eruption. 
About 300 yards in, a 0.2 mile side trail to Humbug Mt is worth the short while. A good view of both peaks that form the saddle. The trail starts paved with salmonberry, thimbleberry, cow parsnip taller than me. Then soft trail, but that didn't last long. Gets gravel/rocky quickly even in the alder forest, then sitka spruce, douglas fir and hemlock. Pink sidalcea carpet some slopes. 360° view on the top. 
Ocean wave is a white line to the west. To the east: Mt Rainier, St Helen, Adams, Hood, and faintly a bit of Jefferson. A sore note: patches of clear cut here and there among the sea of green under us. Flowers from low to high elevation: waterleaf, iris, Solomon's seal, Solomon's plume, Pacific waterleaf, inside-out flower, rosy plectritis, Alice Eastwood's fleabane, field Chickweed, Smith's fairybell, Oregon checkermallow, geum triflorum, Oregon sunshine, both male and female western meadow rue.Mary, today's hike lead from Sierra Club, is very knowledgeable. She also brought an interesting book Attracting Native Pollinators: Protecting North America's Bees and Butterflies by the Xerces Society, and suggested reading of Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy. We got to stop and take photos and learn from her. I tasted miner's lettuce, young leaves of Oregon grapes, seed of sweet cicely. A rare group of hikers: 3 out the 4 of us took public transportation. Thank Susan for driving.
Direction: From Portland, take Highway 26 west for 60 miles, and turn north just before milepost 10 onto Saddle Mountain Road. Go 7 miles on this paved, but bumpy road where it ends at the trailhead. Bathroom, picnic table, camp site next to trailhead. Trail guide.
