Here are six of the Pacific Crest Trail's high points, beginning in Southern Oregon and moving northward. Please e-mail me if you know of more! (see e-mailer on our Contest section below!)
1. Jackson Gap, near Dutchman's Peak in the Siskiyou Mountains. This location is just a few miles north of the California border. Nearby to the Gap is an even higher spot, which is one of the Oregon's remaining active fire lookouts. Click this link.
Peak2. Devil's Peak shoulder in Southern Oregon at 7,300 ft. (old Skyline Trail route). See short story below, which includes thoughts inspired when I met Dr. Tom Hornbein of Mt. Everest Fame!
3. The shoulder of Mt. Thielson above Diamond Lake, at 7,410 ft.
4. The shoulder of Tipsoo Peak just north of Mt. Thielson and a bit SW of Miller Lake. At 7,570 ft, this is the highest point on the entire PCT within Oregon! ..It was part of the original 1920 Oregon Skyline Trail route, so it has been the highest point for a very, very long time....... Click Tipsoo link! Also links to big page on Mt. Thielson.
5. Park Butte crossing, 7,010 ft, just north of Mt. Jefferson and Jeff Park.
6. On the eastern flank
of Mt. Hood, 7,350 ft. (PCT alternate, Timberline Trail)
Click Image to
travel to the high points #4 and
#5 listed above (Tipsoo Peak and Park Butte)
Devil's Peak was such a romantic name! My friends and I just had to hike to the top! At 7,582 feet high, the peak is the hub of the Seven Lakes Basin, a lake grouping that graces a truly remote region of the Oregon Cascades south of Crater Lake National Park. Our guidebooks told us that The Lakes Basin is one of the top five conglomerations of gorgeous mountain lakes in the entire State of Oregon. My friends and I were camped at Island Lake, some ten miles south of Devil's Peak when the urge to climb it struck. It was mid-afternoon when the three of us set out, carrying little else with us except our slim Bible "Survive in the Outdoors."
"We
were sweating upward in the failing light of the deep hemlock
woods with immense choking clouds of mosquitos hot on our tails.
To pause for rest was suicide, and even to slow below a vigorous
walk speed collected new bites. Yea, sure, it was dumb to be there
in our shorts and white t-shirts, not a flashlight among us and
our snacks long since gone. But we were in High School, it was
1965, and we were on our very first backpacking trip. We'd packed
two survival books, Wayne Winters' and Bradford Angier's; they
were our inspiring heros. Heck, just yesterday we had got a trout
by the Indian method with our bare hands from off a makeshift
raft, and the day before had stabbed a frog in a quiet meadow
with a pocket knife and added it to a Miner's Lettuce soup. So
up we toiled, hoping our maps were right and Devil's Peak was
indeed far enough above local timberline to get us above those
mosquitos."
"We reached the pass in the intermission between sunset and mountain night. To our left, a dimmer trail left the Skyline Trail and led toward the dark bulk of Devil's Peak. Straight ahead, the Skyline descended toward the popular Seven Lakes Basin, undoubtably peopled with help for us, 3 kids nearly ten miles from our base camp at Island Lake. But upward we climbed, with the spirit of youth, and, miraculously, a few hundred feet below the summit, the droning hum stopped. The mosquitos were gone, replaced by a quiet purple twilight. In the rising high mountain night; stars were breaking out all over, while behind the peak, the sky still glowed gold. "
"Cold now struck at us, a new reason to hike hard. My two companions were now little more than white shirts bobbing in the semi-darkness. We had a dim plan in mind, it had something to do with the Forest Service lookout on the summit.
"Suddenly, a man's voice hailed us. It was the lookout, dressed in his Forest Service greens, he was almost invisible. He seated on a large flat rock just below the summit, gazing southward at the fading silhouette of Mt. McLoughlin (link) to the south... I must guess that he was lonely, so deep into the wilderness and high in the sky. He didn't even have a dog.
"He led us up into his 360-degree windowed home, started up his stove for heat, and soon we had light and warm soup and other snacks to quell our hunger and dehydration. Feeling warm and strong again, we were inspired when a nearly full moon rose over distant Klamath Lake, and we shrugged off the lookout's offer to stay until daylight. I remember a discussion whose essence was about moonlight guiding us home. We had maps, and theorized that in strong moonlight, we'd be able to read our maps enough to take the proper turns at the three or four crucial trail junctions along the way. I suppose, also, maybe we were worried about Conrad.
"As we reached the deep forest again, I, for one, had my doubts. It was nearly 10 miles back to camp, where our remaining buddy Conrad was tending camp. And the lookout, while he had been able to equip us with some Army K rations, had had no flashlight to loan us, and only one spare flannel shirt. The first of the mosquitos began biting as we descended into the nightime gloom of the forest."
* The booklet in the image is full of great line drawings, has 76 pages, and was written by Wayne Winters, Copyright 1962 by Tombstone Nugget Publishing Co.
-- by Bruce B. Johnson, Copyright 2005, All Rights Reserved.
In January 2004, after meeting famed Mt. Everest climber Dr. Tom Hornbein, I add this to my story: My story is really about Adventure and how it moves and shapes a person's life. It's very meaningful that I am able to remember that distant night in 1965 so vividly, so many years after its occurrence, and to remember it as a high point of my life, not as a disaster.
It's been forty years since Dr. Hornbein's First Ascent of the West Ridge of Mt. Everest... He told us in his small audience that he's learned that the real adventures of life are often not the flashy, well-planned and expensive things, like his 1963 expedition to the Himalayas.... he's found that most of life's real adventures just happen, "just befall us." They're not planned, you just find yourself high on some lonely minor peak with dark coming down and no flashlight, and challenged to make the best of it. Can we take the mental turn of mind to recognize a chance for Adventure instead of seeing only problems and disasters? (January 15, 2004)
If you enjoyed the trail story above, you will LOVE "Listening for Coyote," by the Eugene-based writer William L. Sullivan, a Henry Holt Owl Book, 1988. In it, he describes his solo backpacking journey across the breadth of Oregon from the Coast to the Snake River, in the process traversing both the Siskiyou Mountains and a large portion of the PCT. If you'll click onto my Barnes and Noble bookstore page, you'll be able to order this book from them (the bookstore link will be found on the bottom of the page)
Photos