Climbing Mount Bachelor, Oregon

After hiking to the top of Tumalo Mountain this morning, Katie and I headed across the road (Cascade Lakes Highway) to Mount Bachelor Ski Area. Mount Bachelor is a stratovolcano atop a shield volcano that is 9,065 feet in elevation. We wanted to climb to the summit and decided to shorten the route by riding the Pine Marten Express chairlift up to 7,775 feet elevation. From this point, we only had to climb about 0.9 miles and 1,300 vertical feet to the summit. It's not a technical climb, but it pays to be prepared. We brought along ice axes mostly for the glissade down.

Download route (one-way) in Keyhole Markup Language (KML) format for use with GPS units and mapping programs. Disclaimer.

My parents happened to be staying with friends in Sisters this weekend, so they met us at the bottom of the Pine Marten Express chairlift and treated us to lunch at the Pine Marten Lodge. It was a nice break after our short hike up Tumalo Mountain. The food was good and the views of Mount Bachelor were exquisite. As we ate, we watched a couple climb down from the summit. They had gone up near the Summit Express chairlift and down the route Katie and I planned to climb. It was fun watching them do standing glissades down parts of the route.

   

After lunch, we parted ways with my parents and set off climbing up the NNE ridge of Mount Bachelor. Most of the route was still snow covered even though August was only two days away. I am still amazed at how long snow has stuck around this year.

   

Since Katie is not a big fan of scree, we chose to climb up a steep, narrow band of snow to the summit. I kicked steps for Katie to follow me up. I went ultralight this climb, leaving my trekking poles behind and just carrying my ice axe. The steeper terrain made my axe very useful. We hit a couple icy spots where I ended up chopping a couple steps. Before we reached the summit, we observed another couple climbing up behind us. They chose to ascend on the scree instead of the snow and made good time, nearly catching up to us at the summit.

   

We reached the summit of Mount Bachelor in about 1.5 hours. It was mostly melted out, exposing the rocky summit landscape. The only vegetation we saw were a couple wildflowers that looked as though Spring had just come. The summit was littered with broken glass and remnants of past ski resort projects. It would be nice if the Mount Bachelor Ski Resort would clean up their mess. We also observed thousands of feet of cable (looked like low voltage data cable) along our route that didn't appear to be currently connected to anything. It was probably abandoned from past projects.

The views from the summit were spectacular, just like our South Sister and Tumalo Mountain adventures. We could see the Three Sisters, Mount Washington, Mount Jefferson, Broken Top, Tumalo Mountain, and many lakes.

   

   

After I sufficiently wandered around the summit, we headed back down. We chose the scree instead of the snow for the first part of our descent. The other couple who summitted interestingly enough chose the opposite. Once off the scree, we glissaded the rest of the way down on our Glissade Diaper Sleds\>. It took us about an hour to get down. After a slow chairlift ride down, we were back at our truck.

   

For such a short climb, I was surprised it's not more popular. The views are great and multiple routes can be taken to the summit. I suppose with the Summit Express chairlift that runs to the top in the winter, people figure they can just ride up without any effort. But then what's the fun in that?