The Pacific Crest Trail

187.2 miles

The PCT in Oregon is typically wooded, following long, broad ridges in coniferous forests dotted with lakes. Climbs are gentle, the footway well-graded. Strong long-distance hikers frequently cover up to 30 miles a day here—and sometimes more.

Oregon can lay claim to completing one of the earliest sections of the Pacific Crest Trail, although much of that original route is no longer in use. The mostly defunct Oregon Skyline Trail originally ran from Crater Lake in the south of the state to Mount Hood in the north. In 1937, when construction was completed on trails leading south from Crater Lake to the California border, and north from Mount Hood to the Washington border, Oregon became the first state to have a border-to-border trail.

Much of that old footway has been abandoned in favor of a higher route, chosen both because it offers a more truly crest-line path and because it avoids contributing to problems of overuse at popular lakeside campsites. But many segments of the old Oregon Skyline Trail still exist and are maintained as trails in national forests and wilderness areas. Some of these links are used by long-distance hikers as alternate routes because they pass close to backcountry lodges that will hold hiker boxes for resupply. They can also be used by weekend hikers to form loops.

Following Oregon’s PCT is like following a row of beacons. The beacons, of course, are the volcanoes. The PCT circles around the shoulders of these giants, staying at relatively level elevations. Oregon’s PCT ranges in elevation from nearly sea level at the Columbia River Gorge to more than 7,000 feet at Crater Lake. It spends the vast majority of its mileage gently undulating between 5,000 and 6,000 feet, and dips below 3,200 feet only on its final descent into the Columbia River Gorge.

By now, long-distance hikers are used to the dramatic differences in environment and ecology caused by the gain or loss of several thousand feet of elevation. The same changes, of course—from scrub to forest to alpine meadow to tundra—occur with changes in latitude. If you’ve previously hiked part or all of the trail in California, it’s worth stopping for a moment here in Oregon to note how the change in latitude has affected what you’ll see at different elevations. Most obvious is the much lower tree line. At 9,000 feet in the Cascades (assuming you were to climb that high), you would find the arctic rock and ice zone that you saw at 13,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada; in southern Oregon at elevations of 6,000 feet, you walk through forests of pine and fir, similar to those found above 9,000 feet in the San Gabriel Mountains.

One other difference: The character of the Oregon PCT is much more homogeneous than that of the California PCT. Particularly in the southern part of the state, the trail spends many miles in gentle forests, where dramatic views and changes of elevation are the exception rather than the rule. Still, this section spends much of its time in the Sky Lakes Wilderness and Crater Lake National Park—both well worth a visit, although preferably not in mosquito season.

THE ROUTE

From Interstate 5 at the beginning of this section, the trail heads east to rejoin the main ridge of the Cascades, which hikers will follow from here to the Canadian border, still almost 1,000 miles away. The first 54 miles north of I-5 are not the Oregon PCT’s most scenic. Unfortunately, the BLM, which manages much of the land near Ashland through which the trail passes, has allowed old-growth forests to be lumbered. You’ll see the evidence in checkerboard clear-cuts.

These first miles have always posed a challenge for trail builders. Oregon’s original Skyline Trail stopped at Crater Lake, because trail builders didn’t think the land between Crater Lake and the Oregon-California border was especially suited to a hiking trail. It was only when a Mexico-to-Canada route was proposed that Oregon’s trail was extended. Even then, private property, water shortages, and incompatible land uses such as grazing and logging made trail building a challenge. In 1945, Clinton Clarke described southernmost Oregon as “a hotter and dryer climate, thinner forest and without special scenic value.” In short, from I-5 to Fish Lake (about 54 miles) the main concern of the PCT is to get itself realigned with the crest of the Cascades, where it will stay all the way to Manning Park in Canada. While there is nothing especially difficult or unpleasant about these miles—assuming that hikers pay attention to their water supply—short-distance hikers might maximize the scenic value of their trip by starting at Oregon Highway 140 near Fish Lake rather than at I-5.

Oregon at last! The author reaches the border on her thru-hike.

The trail rejoins the crest of the Cascades near Mount McLoughlin, then enters the Sky Lakes Wilderness, where the dry ridgeline trail manages to avoid every one of the wilderness’s eponymous lakes (a distinct advantage in mosquito season). There is a large network of trails here, however, and lake-loving hikers will have no problem detouring to water.

Next up is the so-called Oregon Desert, which looks less like a desert than a patchy forest of scraggly lodgepole pines, any of which could have been used as a model for Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. Again, watch your water: From Jack Spring Spur Trail to Mazama Campground in Crater Lake National Park, there’s a 15-mile dry stretch. That said, it’s also worth pointing out that snow patches can linger here surprisingly late in July.

After Mazama Campground, the trail climbs to the rim of Crater Lake, where it looks down on America’s deepest lake. For many years the PCT avoided walking along the scenic rim of Crater Lake because a trail here was not feasible for equestrians. Hikers wanting to see the lake (which included just about all hikers) left the trail and walked along the park road. Recently, however, the trail has been divided into hiker and equestrian routes. The equestrian route stays on the old path through the dry plateau; the new hiking trail takes a more scenic route along the rim, where it reaches 7,650 feet near the Watchman, a protruding andesite ridge produced when lava flowed out of a volcanic vent. This is the PCT’s highest point in Oregon.

After Crater Lake, the trail passes near Diamond Lake Resort, a popular resupply stop with a post office, restaurant, store, and lodge. Next, the trail enters the Mount Thielsen Wilderness; then, at Emigrant Pass, the Diamond Peak Wilderness. This section ends at Willamette Pass (though a good argument could be made for the convenience of ending your hike at the small Shelter Cove resort, which is near the end of this section on Odell Lake).

WHAT YOU’LL SEE

Cascade Volcanoes

The Cascade Range, which you first encountered just north of Belden, in northern California, extends from approximately Mount Lassen to the Fraser River in Canada. Like the Sierra Nevada, the range changes in character as you move along it.

The southern Cascades are approximately 30 to 50 miles wide. On the western side of the range, elevations average around 5,000 feet. On that side, some of the volcanic flows are ancient—as much as 12 to 38 million years old. The eastern side, where the PCT spends much of its time, features the newer, higher peaks—including Jefferson and Hood and the Three Sisters (see chapters 13 and 14). Many of these major peaks tower a mile above the lower, more rounded mountains and ridges that surround them. However, you’ll have to wait a while longer to see Oregon’s most dramatic peaks. In this southernmost section of the state, the volcanoes are older and more eroded.

The volcanoes that hikers see in the Cascades are really part of a global structure, the Pacific Ring of volcanoes, which includes the Andes of South America, Alaska’s Aleutians, Japan, and Indonesia. Volcanoes (like faults and earthquakes) are the product of plate tectonics. In this region, the Pacific Plate is expanding and colliding with the Continental Plate. As a result, the Pacific Plate has been subducted, or pushed down, beneath the Continental Plate. In the Klamath Mountains, this resulted in heated granite rising to the surface. In the Cascades, the heat of the earth melted rock miles beneath the surface into liquid magma, which is under enormous pressure. Once in a while, it shoots out of the earth. Hence the ring of fire-breathing mountains.

The Cascades are volcanically active today. At least seven Cascade volcanoes have been active in the last 150 years. Since the end of the Ice Age (about 10,000 years ago), the Cascades have produced, on the average, at least one major outburst per century. In the 20th century, we had two: Lassen, in California, and Mount St. Helens, in Washington. In addition, recent avalanches of rock and mud at Mounts Baker and Rainier (both in Washington) are thought to be the result of geothermal activity. Along Oregon and Washington’s PCT, you’ll walk past almost constant reminders of volcanic activity: huge lava flows, ash, pumice, obsidian, cinder cones, and the occasional (and welcome) hot spring. If you’re the worrying kind, you can take comfort in statistics: Geologist Bates McKee says, “From an actuarial point of view, even active volcanoes are infinitely safer than are highways.”

A volcanic eruption is a discharge on the surface of earth of magmatic material in solid, liquid, or gas form. The ejecta (whether solid, liquid, or gas) comes up from the heated depths of the earth via pipes or fissures. When an eruption takes place through a vertical chimney, the chimney is widened by the outward expansion and it slumps inward, producing a crater with flared sides. This is what produces the conical shape of the classic volcano. Lava may also erupt from satellite cones below the summit. A caldera is the gigantic depression within the walls of a summit, created at the volcano’s main vent. A crater—typically much smaller than a caldera—occurs at satellite vents.

Mount McLoughlin

Long-distance hikers will appreciate the fact that Mount McLoughlin, elevation 9,493 feet, is named after a 19th-century trail angel. (They might not, however, appreciate the nugget of information that Mount McLoughlin is, as the crow flies, only 50 miles north of Mount Shasta. As the hiker walks it’s—get ready for this—almost 300 miles!)

As an administrator for Hudson’s Bay Company, Dr. John McLoughlin aided settlers arriving exhausted from the rigors of the Oregon Trail. At a time when both the United States and England claimed parts of the Oregon Territory—and almost came to blows over the location of the Canadian-American border—McLoughlin was famous for aiding all comers. The mountain, originally called Mount Pitt, was renamed in his honor.

Mount McLoughlin is the highest peak between Shasta and the Three Sisters. Like most of the major volcanoes in the Cascades, McLoughlin is a stratovolcano, made up of both lava, which is molten rock, and other matter that is pyroclastic in origin.

From a distance, the peak appears symmetrical, but views from the summit ridge reveal it as being severely eroded, with a large basin cut into its northeastern flank. Mount McLoughlin is older than many of the other major Cascade peaks—some estimates place its age at 100,000 years, and it probably reached maturity about 25,000 years ago, before the height of the most recent glaciation. So it has had plenty of time to become eroded and deeply scarred by glaciation. A small glacier survived on its summit until about 100 years ago.

The trail to the summit of Mount McLoughlin is 6 miles long. The best time of year to attempt the ascent is from late July through August.

To climb McLoughlin from the PCT, take Trail 3716. Warning: The last 1.5 miles is a trailless scramble. Be sure to keep an eye on the weather, because it’s easy to get disoriented and lose the way back if the summit becomes fogged in. And take plenty of water. The reward: great views south to Mount Shasta and north to Mount Thielsen. On a good day, you can see the Three Sisters.

Crater Lake

Crater Lake—the deepest lake in the United States and the seventh-deepest in the world—is actually the remains of a volcano that blew itself up approximately 6,900 years ago. Geologists refer to the extinct mountain as Mazama (Spanish for mountain goat) and estimate that it might once have been as high as 12,000 feet—higher than Mount Hood, Oregon’s current high point. All that is left today is a 20.25-square mile, 1,932-foot deep hole in the ground.

The power of Cascadian volcanoes can be appreciated by considering the extent of Mazama’s eruption: It spewed 42 cubic miles of matter over some 350,000 square miles. Winds from the southwest carried its ashes over much of Oregon and Washington, as well as parts of Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, British Columbia, Alberta, and even Saskatchewan. At the base of the mountain, ash accumulated in 20-foot deep piles; 70 miles away, a blanket of ash a foot deep covered the ground. One writer postulates that the ash may have risen into the stratosphere, traveling (like the ash from Krakatoa) around the globe and creating colorful sunsets that might have astonished the ancestors of Druids and Gauls in England, half a world away!

Trail work is done with hand tools in wilderness areas.

Geologists estimate that the force of Mazama’s explosion was equivalent to 40 times the force of Mount St. Helens’ 1980 eruption. Consider: Although the eruption of Mount St. Helens was one of the biggest volcanic blasts in recorded history, it left most of the mountain standing. In contract, all that is left of Mazama is a huge hole that filled with snow and rain until it became a lake.

There is no outlet. The lake is encircled by the crater walls, which rise many hundreds of feet above the level of the water. Water can escape only through evaporation. In recent years, evaporation and precipitation have so exactly balanced each other that the water level of this nearly 2,000- foot-deep lake rarely fluctuates by more than an inch.

On the western side of the lake, below the Watchman, is Wizard Island, a small cinder cone that has erupted several times since Mazama collapsed. The island’s high point is 763 feet above the lake’s surface. You can get to the island by a boat operated by the Park Service. An easy climb takes you to the summit, from which you can peer into the 300-foot deep, 90-foot-wide crater, which is one of the best-preserved explosion craters in the Cascades.

Oregon Desert

Indians lived in the area at the time, and almost undoubtedly witnessed the eruption. Certainly the lake was a sacred place to the Native Americans who lived here when the first Europeans arrived. Shamans forbade their people to gaze at the lake. Perhaps that is why Natives did not tell Caucasians about it. The lake was only discovered by European Americans in 1853 when a group of explorers stumbled upon it while looking for the legendary Lost Cabin Mine.

Boat tours are available: a rare opportunity to see a mountain from the inside out.

Oregon Desert

Mazama’s explosion is responsible for another phenomenon seen along the route. The so-called Oregon Desert is not technically a desert, but rather a dry stretch that was created when the volcano’s explosion covered the surrounding area in ash and pumice. On the PCT, water is in short supply for almost 50 miles.

Look here for pumice, pieces of light-colored volcanic rock. Pumice is easy to identify because of its noticeably light weight. Pumice is ejected as liquid that “freezes” before it hits the ground. As it solidifies, air pockets are trapped inside. Put a piece in water: It’s a rock that actually floats!

This pumice and the accompanying ash also covered the streams, which now largely run underground. Hence the long dry stretches of trail. The porous volcanic soil simply lets rainwater percolate through it, leaving little for thirsty hikers and trees. Trees that do grow here, like the scrawny lodgepole pines, are drought-tolerant and shriveled by the lack of water.

Mount Thielsen

Mount Thielsen, elevation 9,178 feet, is the next volcano on our route. It is completely different than its two predecessors, Mount McLoughlin and Crater Lake. A massive tower of eroded rock, Thielsen doesn’t have the picture-postcard conical shape we think of when we picture a volcano. Instead, it looks like a skyscraper that’s been hit by a wrecking ball. The dramatic souring is the result of the action of 100,000 years of glaciation and erosion on a landscape originally shaped by volcanic forces.

Mount Thielsen is one of Oregon’s so-called Matterhorn peaks, named for their sky-piercing profiles. The Matterhorn peaks are easily identified by their gentle bases and very steep summits; all have lost all traces of their original summit craters. Far older than the more intact peaks like Hood and Rainier, the Matterhorn peaks also had the height of their volcanic activity far earlier, and all of them were extinct before the Ice Age ended. As a result, they’ve had a very long time to succumb to the eroding forces of glaciation, wind, and rain.

Despite their steep vertical profiles, the Matterhorn peaks are, interestingly enough, actually the remnants of shield volcanoes. As described in chapter 10, shield volcanoes (like the volcanoes of Hawaii) usually have a gentle, broad shape—like that of a shield placed on the ground—that is due to the ejection of thin lava that spreads over a wide area. The Matterhorn peaks began life as shield volcanoes. After a time, however, ejected material began to collect, building steep summit cones. The cones were “invaded” by plugs, which were pushed up by pressure within the earth. When these plugs were exposed by erosion, they became the pinnacles of the Matterhorn summits.

The PCT passes several other Matterhorn peaks in Oregon, including Mount Washington and Three Fingered Jack.

As might be expected, Thielsen’s spire attracts both storms and climbers, who should take note of its nickname: Lightning Rod of the Cascades.

Evidence of lightning is found in the presence of a peculiar glassy substance called fulgurite, which is created when repeated electrical charges fuse certain kinds of rock crystals together. This glassy green-brown substance coats some of Thielsen’s summit rocks like a layer of enamel. There’s a safety lesson here: Outdoor experts suggest that if you’re caught high on a ridge in a storm, you should lose elevation—even a few feet will help. Dropping down a couple of yards might seem a pathetic, even token, recourse when you’re stuck up high, exposed to the fury of a full-fledged electrical storm. But consider this: The lightning-fused fulgurite atop Thielsen is found only on the top 5 or 6 feet of the summit area. Below that, you are (at least, statistically) safer.

HIKING INFORMATION

Seasonal Information and Gear Tips

August and September are the best months for hiking in Oregon. In July there may still be patchy snow, and there will almost definitely be mosquitoes, so bring a tent and plenty of DEET. In a high snow year, snow and mosquitoes can linger well into August. August is the driest month in the Pacific Northwest. September can also be dry and comfortable—but it’s not unusual for early fall storms to roll in. For summer hiking, one warm layer plus rain gear should be adequate.

Thru-hikers’ Corner

Oregon is a fast, easy hike for most thru-hikers, who usually arrive well after the snowmelt. The trail is well-graded, and big climbs are few and far between. In short, if you’re interested in big mileage, this is a good place to do it.

The major challenge is resupplying. The PCT only goes near towns when it enters the state (near Ashland) and when it leaves it (at Cascade Locks). In between, going to town means long hitchhikes, so most hikers resupply at the backcountry lodges which lie near the trail.

Even if you generally prefer to buy your food as you go, you might want to consider using mail drops for some of Oregon’s resupplies, because the stores at the lodges vary from fully stocked to nearly bare. Most of these lodges do not receive rural mail delivery; they must pick up their mail at the nearest post office, which may be many miles away. So some of them require hikers to use UPS or another private delivery service that will actually deliver the package to their door. While the information at the end of this chapter under Resupplies and Trailheads is current as of this writing, please be aware that lodges change owners and policies. Write in advance to confirm that they will hold your package for you.

Best Short Hikes

• The highlight of this section is the 8.8-mile walk along the rim of Crater Lake starting from Crater Lake Lodge (mile 108.3) and ending at the junction with the PCT equestrian route (mile 117.1).

• An especially fine 30-mile, 2- to 3-day hike starts at the PCT’s crossing of Oregon Highway 138 near the Cascade Crest (at mile 124.0). The Forest Service parking lot is 0.2 miles west. The trail climbs to the crest with fine views of Mount Thielsen, reaching a high point of 7,435 feet in 14.8 miles. There’s an opportunity to scramble to the top of Mount Thielsen (see page 209), with views north to Mount Jefferson and south to Shasta. Figure a 2-hour round trip. Continuing on, the trail follows a high ridge past Tipsoo Peak (the summit of which is an easy 20-minute detour), then continues to Tolo Camp. This hike ends at Forest Road 60 in Windigo Pass.

Resupplies and Trailheads

Ashland (mile 0) is about 12.9 miles north of the trail, on I-5. With great food, microbrew bars, health-food stores, an outfitter, and the renowned Shakespeare Festival (if it’s sold out, try to score tickets from people selling outside the theater the evening of the performance), it’s got everything you need to rest, recuperate, and rev up for the 1,000 miles ahead. From the intersection of the trail and I-5, hiker-friendly Callahans Restaurant is 0.9 miles north on Oregon Highway 99. Post office: General Delivery, Ashland, OR 97520

Fish Lake Resort (mile 54.3) is about 1.8 miles west of the PCT crossing of Highway 140. It has a café, limited supplies, cabins, and showers. It will hold packages if you send them UPS. Contact: Fish Lake Lodge, Highway 140 MM #30, Medford, OR 97501

Mazama Village and Campground (mile 103.8) is in Crater Lake National Park. It is 1.3 miles east of the trail on Highway 62 and has a motel, campground, showers, and groceries. However, it’s best to send packages to Crater Lake Lodge, 4.5 miles north on the PCT. Contact: Crater Lake Lodge, 400 Rim Village Drive, Crater Lake, OR 97604

Diamond Lake Lodge (mile 132.1) is most directly accessed by the Mount Thielsen Trail #1456, which leads 4 miles down to the resort, where there are cabins, a store, a restaurant, and a post office.