5 Peaks to Summit Around Oregon—and How to Prepare

Peak Moments

Five sky-scraping adventures around the state for any fitness level—and a plan for getting ready

written by Cathy Carroll

Look up. In Oregon, things begin looking up when you are, too. With white peaks scraping our skies, our volcanic landscape calls out with an invitation. Don’t decline, don’t send your regrets. Get ready to shift your perspective by standing atop a peak later this spring or in summer.

Simply planning an adventure can make you about as happy as actually doing it. Psychological research bears this out. That’s also the case with setting specific, measurable, attainable goals to get you ready for peak season. Here are five peaks to summit around the state, from easy to difficult, with expert tips on how to prepare.

Mount Hood

Mount Hood is a good entree to technical climbing.

Ronald Hope

Cliff Agocs has spent his life climbing peaks around the world, and one of his favorite mountaineering moments happens when he’s on the south side of Mount Hood. It’s nearing dawn, and he’s been climbing in the dark for about four hours. Nearing the final ascent to the highest point in Oregon, 11,250 feet, the first light gives a faint hint of the rim of a crater above. The sky grows bluer. Agocs turns off his headlamp and turns to look behind him.

“The shadow of the mountain, a giant triangular shadow, is cast over the forest and Government Camp,” he said. Or, the shadow might fall on the layer of clouds below him. “It’s a really powerful moment that you’ve never thought about. You don’t know that shadow exists.”

Agocs loves sharing the moment when he’s guiding people in the climb, too. “I know it’s coming and I’m about to blow everybody’s minds.”

At the summit, the sunrise is glinting off the Columbia River as the eye sweeps around to Mount Jefferson, north to Mount Rainier, Mount Adams and Mount Saint Helens in Washington, the lights of Portland and Gresham below, and a line of white-capped sentinels, South, Middle and North Sister and Broken Top. “I tell people, ‘I can see my house,’” said Agocs, of Bend.

Mount Hood summit at sunrise.

Ronald Hope

Timberline Mountain Guides offers training in using crampons, ice axes and rope-systems before guiding you to the top.

MtHoodTerritory.com

Mount Hood has moderate routes for beginners and Agocs’ Timberline Mountain Guides offers a four-hour training session in using crampons, ice axes and rope-systems before guiding you to the top in the early hours of the next day. The mountain is a good entree to technical climbing, because it’s relatively low considering how steep it is, and it’s easy to access. You can drive to a plowed parking lot at 6,000 feet and sleep in historic Timberline Lodge or another nearby hotel before you set out.

“I’ve had kids as young as 13 summit and a man in his early 80s,” said Agocs. “It’s a good place for folks to start that journey of challenging themselves on a technical mountain.”

South Sister

Summiting South Sister is an eight- to ten-hour day of scaling 5,000 feet of elevation.

U.S. Forest Service

From just about anywhere in Bend, you can see South Sister. Is she calling to you? Don’t let it go to voicemail—listen.

The view from town, whether you’re sitting outside sipping a beer or making a mountain out of a molehill at your desk, is the south side of South Sister, one of the easiest routes on any of Oregon’s big peaks such as this one, its third-tallest. By mid-summer, the trail from Devils Lake is mostly free of snow, ready for your boots to fall on it, past two glaciers and culminating at the 10,358 foot summit.

Even though mountaineering expert Cliff Agocs has climbed some of the globe’s most challenging peaks, he still has superlatives for this one. “One thing is for certain, the view is amazing when you are standing on top of it. You can see the whole spread of the Oregon Cascades and on a clear day, as far as Mount Adams very clearly,” he said. “It’s pretty incredible.”

The view from South Sister, Oregon’s third-tallest peak at 10,358 feet.

Chris Henderson

The eight- to ten-hour day of scaling 5,000 feet of elevation covers 12 miles roundtrip. Near the top, the well-worn trail on a natural field of gravel is known for its loose footing. “If you go too fast or step in the wrong place, you’re not going to fall off the mountain, but it burns more energy,” said Agocs. “You use more small, stabilizing muscles in your legs, not the big quads, which is one of the things that makes hiking so good for you. It demands full-body fitness, more than a stairmaster or running on pavement.”

Then there’s the mindset—what’s in your head as you continually walk skyward, with a big reward at the apex, rather than a loop or linear route. “A lot of folks get into a little mantra, or lost in their thoughts and surroundings,” Agocs said. “You just keep putting one foot in front of the other until you’re at the top. We all have our moments of trying to get to the top and ‘This sucks, my legs are tired, I’m breathing heavily and I kind of want to give up,’ but you push through and get a lot of satisfaction at the top to see that view.”

When you’re back in town, your lower lip no longer trembling, your upper lip coated in beer foam, it all comes into perspective. “You’ll be saying, ‘Man that scree was brutal.’ Those are the bragging rights,” said Agocs.

By mid-summer, the trail from Devils Lake is mostly free of snow.

Chris Henderson

Mount Ashland

Emerging from meadows of chest-high wildflowers and a grove of aspens, you gaze down at the other-worldly sapphire blue of America’s deepest lake, Crater Lake, and over to the Klamath Range, Mount Thielsen, Mount McLoughlin, and on to the Trinity Alps, Red Buttes and Mount Shasta in California. This dreamscape unfolds at the summit of Mount Ashland, the highest point in the Siskiyous, a solid return on investment for a day hike.

The view from the summit includes Crater Lake, Mount Thielsen, Mount McLoughlin, and on to the Trinity Alps.

Torsten Heycke

As you cover the first of the roughly 2-mile trek from the ski area’s parking lot, you’ll feel young amid old growth forest. When the canopy opens up to a field of scarlet gilia, larkspur, paintbrush and columbine, your breath might hint otherwise as you progress toward a 900-foot elevation gain and thinner air near the 7,488-foot mountaintop. Erase that from your mind. Be an anti-peak-bagger and stay in the moment.

Do this by keeping an eye out for a rare type of delicate, white-petaled, Henderson’s horkelia, found only in the Siskiyous, and purple-blossomed Mount Ashland lupine, designated as “critically imperiled” by development, according to the U.S. Forest Service. While you’re busy putting one sensiblybooted foot in front of the other over some loose granite, forget botanical facts and lose yourself in swaths of phlox.

Pursuing vast, elevated perches such as this can make you feel small. At the summit, you’ll feel like an ant beside a golf ball. The giant white ball, affectionately known by locals as the BRT (Big Round Thing), it houses doppler radar, the National Weather Service’s high-tech sensing equipment.

Mount Ashland has separate trails for mountain biking and for hiking to the summit.

Justin Olsen/Travel Southern Oregon

The views also include Mount Shasta in California.

Torsten Heycke

It doesn’t have to be in your selfie, though. Point the lens elsewhere. To mix up the view on the descent and make a loop, take the road down the south side of the mountain for a 3.2-mile roundtrip outing.

Keep camera mode at the ready. “Sunsets seem to last for days as the distant peaks retain the gorgeous, ruby-red silhouettes long after the sun disappears below the horizon,” said Michael Stringer, spokesman for the Mount Ashland Association, the community’s nonprofit ski area.

Ice Lake

Ice Lake in the shadow of the Matterhorn, the Wallowa’s second-highest peak.

Adam Sawyer

Ice Lake may be the destination of this challenging trek, but the waterfall-studded journey itself, amid the jagged granite peaks of the Wallowas is perhaps the true reward. Here in the Eagle Cap Wilderness, Oregon’s largest federally protected, virtually untouched treasure, nearly 360,000 acres is yours to explore. This is a 15.4-mile taste of that land, largely unchanged since Nez Perce Chief Joseph gave a feast for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

“It’s in its own pocket of the state,” said Adam Sawyer, author of several guidebooks, including Hiking Waterfalls in Oregon. “It’s not on the way to anywhere. It’s so vast. Those dramatic granite faces, and in summer, those high mountain meadows are heaven on earth, with streams, lakes and mountainous backdrops.”

The first bit of positive reinforcement comes less than a half-mile en route. At the junction, opt in for a mile-long tangent to BC Falls, tumbling 50 feet into the Wallowa River. Listen for a couple more waterfalls along the way. Seeing them, however, requires some careful forays off the main trail, said Sawyer.

The following thigh-burning section of switchbacks is rewarded with an eye-full—a stunning basin and Beauty Falls, with a backdrop of Ice Falls cascading from a ridge beyond. Recommence with switchbacks. As with other falls along the way, you have to listen for Ice Falls, and look for boot paths leading off the main trail to see the 480-foot outpouring, which makes a terraced descent, rather than a single, direct plunge.

“I was torn between dropping my pack and photographing and looking at the falls and rushing to get a good campsite,” said Sawyer. “In a perfect world, I would go get the site and come back.”

In about a half mile, Ice Lake reveals itself, lorded over by the Matterhorn, at 9,826 feet, the Wallowa’s second-highest peak. This scenery, evocative of Italy’s Dolomites, said Sawyer, justifies the Wallowas’ nickname, “the Oregon alps.”

Cascade Head

Cascade Head offers sweeping views of the Pacific.

Jarett Juarez

With the sound of barking sea lions echoing through a rainforest of 250-year-old Sitka spruce and an 80-foot waterfall teeming into the Pacific, Hart’s Cove generously doles out rewards for a moderately steep trek. It also demands patience. The 5.6-mile route near Lincoln City doesn’t open until July 16, thus protecting the rare habitat of the threatened Oregon silverspot butterfly. This journey’s worth waiting for. You’ll begin by descending through a young hemlock forest before winding up switchbacks and crossing a small creek and a meadow overlooking the ocean. That’s the opening act for Chitwood Falls, cascading over the cliff at Hart’s Cove.

The views along the Hart’s Cove trail are considered to be among the best on the Oregon coast.

Jarett Juarez

“It’s one of the best views on the Oregon coast, where you see Three Rocks and the Salmon River estuary,” said Sawyer.

The spot is adjacent to one of four places in the world where the Oregon silverspot butterfly can live, because it depends on a single plant species, the early blue violet, which grows here. After locals and the Portland-based Mazamas mountaineering nonprofit raised funds to protect the area, the Nature Conservancy sealed the deal, buying 270 acres there in 1966. Two narrow trails on the preserve, easily accessed from the road, typically draw 35,000 visitors a year. These have been closed to maintain the state’s social distancing guidelines, making the more ambitious Hart’s Cove a good alternative to experience the area, unusually abundant with prairies of native red fescue, wild rye, Pacific reedgrass, coastal paintbrush, streambank lupine and the rare, pink-petaled Nelson’s checkermallow, federally listed as threatened. The area is a designated National Scenic Research Area and a United Nations Biosphere Reserve.

An underwater volcanic basalt flow about thirty-seven million years ago formed the headland, and Hart’s Cove trail offers 1,300 feet in elevation for you to do a vigorous out-and-back. “It’s a good day-hike, good training for the legs,” said Sawyer. “You’ll definitely want to stay on the trail, and no dogs are allowed, ever, even on leash, or you will get canceled.”

GET READY: Expert tips for taking on Oregon's peaks

Oregon hiking and mountaineering experts offered these tips for getting in shape to summit some of Oregon’s peaks this summer.

Cliff Agocs, co-owner of Timberline Mountain Guides in Bend, has climbed peaks around the world. He said gyms are convenient, especially following a work day when it’s dark, but Oregon’s free 24/7 gym—it’s open spaces—is a great way to train for a climb or hike.

“I think folks often think sunny, clear weather is when to go outside, but when you live really close to the woods, you can dabble in varying conditions, if you can afford time to build up with small adventures,” he said. “In a city, that can be a big time commitment, so you’ll want to make the most of your drive time on a weekend day, and prepare at other times with a gym. But if you live close to that stuff, get out on little adventures to build up your endurance and explore areas around you.”

He suggests setting a goal to do a different hike every weekend. Or two nights a week, do a short hike in the moonlight in and around your town. Climbers, mountaineers and hikers should think in two units: mileage and vertical elevation gain. Try doing repetitive laps on hills.

“If South Sister is a 5,000-foot elevation gain on the trail summit and five miles, think like that—ask yourself, ‘How long did it take me to do half that mileage and at a quarter of the elevation?’” Agocs said. Set aside days off to simulate the full elevation gain and distance of your targeted summit.

Author Adam Sawyer, whose guidebooks cover urban and wilderness hiking, elaborated on using peaks within your city’s limits to help you train. Think Bend’s Pilot Butte, with a 452-foot elevation gain and Portland’s Forest Park, which offers 950 feet of elevation gain on the Lower Macleay Park Trailhead to Pittock Mansion, or Powell Butte, which peaks at about 600 feet. In Ashland, Lithia Park’s upper trails offer a few hundred feet of elevation.

When you’ve prepared your body for summiting a peak, get gear to protect you against the elements and carry “the ten essentials,” crucial items for first aid and emergencies. Check out the U.S. National Park Service list at www.nps.gov/articles/10essentials.htm.