Attractions include views of the Columbia Gorge, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, and wildflowers, especially in May. Flowering plants along the trail include chocolate lily, woodland star, fairy slipper, hookspur violet, yellow fawn lily, balsamroot, and Columbia kittentails. Hazards include poison oak, rattlesnakes, scorpions, and steep slopes. The trail's difficulty caused one writer to describe it as a grueling hike, while another said that Dog Mountain might better be called Dogged Mountain or possibly Doggone Mountain, and recommended good boots for descending its steep pitches. A fatality occurred on the mountain in 2003, when a hiker lost her footing and fell .