Mount Theilsen

The morning started off a little chilly, around 35 degrees, but with a fantastic view of the night sky. There were reported sightings of meteors, but i never saw any... We were camped at the Trail Head for our hike up the rugged "Lightning Rod", Mount Theilsen. We were situated at 5,400 feet, and our goal for the day would be 9,182 ft. The hike started off at 630, a little late for my likings, but everything turned out alright, Until the sun rose we were just being illuminated by two headlamps (because most people, including me, forgot their's at home), as we marched through the woods, winding towards the base of the volcano. The first hour or so of our hike was shrouded in much mystery, since driving in late at night, and not being able to see th peak from the TH, we had no real idea what we were up for. (The following pictures, including the first picture are before we could see Mt. Theilsen, the last picture is Theilsen herself).





Our first view of Theilsen was as we rounded a switch back, and it was just looming above us! From then on, we started to hike faster, and as we got higher there was more and more snow on the ground!! Once above treeline, we just straight lined right up the side of the mountain, one could not have taken a more direct route than we did. After a little bit of time, our group split apart, and the front 4 went on ahead, and found a nice place to have lunch just below the summit. By this time it was 10am, and it must have been close to 60 degrees with a beautiful sky. If you looked west you could see Mount. Bailey (preivous phots, of a rounded volcano), Craker Lake, and in the distant background Mt. Shasta.





After our lunch break we carefully picked our way uptowards the point where we would attempt the summit. The actual summit was a pillar of rocks around 50 or 60 feet high, but it was a very technical scramble to get up there, of our group of 7, only 3 made the actual summit. I took the following three pictures, the first is of Keith, sitting on the summit (yes, that clump of rocks is the summit), the second is looking down behind him, and the third is a group shot.





After spending quite some time scrambling around, trying not to fall off, we headed back down, it was quite slow, because all of the snow was melting making the rocks very slick, but after an hour or so of "boot skiing" we were back on the trail, saddened by the lack of snow, this was the final look at the mountain.

We were back at our van/trailer by 2pm after a solid day of hiking. But the day was far from over.... Since we were only 15 miles or so from Crater Lake, and it was such a gorgeous day, we decided to swing by and have a look.






Seeing Crater Lake like this was absolutely amazing, this was the third time i have seen Crater Lake, and it was by-far the best experience i have had there. Besides the weather being amazing, the lake was perfectly still, there was no waves or wind to cause disturbances on the surface, because of this; there were beautiful reflections created by the crater. Another fun thing was that there was a fair amount of snow, both on the hike (everything above treeline was snowy) and the rim of the crater was quite snowy. Sadly i did not have my skis, so could not make get any freshies, but my goal is a few runs before November. After leaving Crater Lake we (meaning I) drove back along highway 97 to highway 58, the last goal of our trip was to see Salt Creek Falls, which is a waterfall fueled by a tiny stream, no wider than 20 or 30 feet. After seeing the Falls we drove back into Eugene and called it a solid trip.