July 12, 2003
By Tom Herron
Mt. Thielsen is located just north of Crater Lake and is clearly visible from Hwy 97 from South of La Pine. It is often referred to as the “Lightning Rod of the Cascades” because of its sharp summit spire. The steep summit block also makes the mountain an exciting climb.
Four members went on this climb: Liz Coleman (outing coordinator), myself, David Lenhardt, and Lacey Phillabaum. We all met at my house at 6:30 am and carpooled in Dave’s 4-runner. Lacey took advantage of the 90 minutes that it took to reach the trailhead by catching a bit more sleep (see photo).
We chose to approach the mountain from the trailhead by Diamond Lake. It’s a four mile hike to a ridge at the base of the mountain. But the views along the way are wonderful. Mt Bailey and Diamond Lake are visible to the west and the Three Sisters and Diamond Peak come into view at the ridge.
From the hiking trail, a climber’s trail follows the west ridge up to the summit. It starts out only slightly steeper than the hiking trail in, but quickly enters a long section of loose scree. Near the top the scree gives way to talus. For the most part, the talus is much easier to climb than the scree—just be careful where you step and which rocks you pull on! Once on the talus, the trail gradually veers right and leads to the south side of the summit block. The last fifty feet of climbing is the steepest and most exposed, although the rock quality is quite good. Still, many people avoid the summit for the rocky point sticking out on the east side of the summit block (jokingly called “chicken point”)
I scrambled to top and set up a rope, in case any of our group wanted a little confidence booster. But everyone was comfortable with the difficulty level and we only used the rope to rappel down. A group of three guys were on the summit at the same time as us and we had one of them snap a picture of our group.
Total time round trip from Bend was about 12 hours.
Some useful links…
- Geology: http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Thielsen/Locale/framework.html
- Climbing: http://www.summitpost.com/mountains/mountain_link.pl/mountain_id/276
- Hiking: http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/umpqua/rec/hiking/trails/tr3_1456.html
- WebCam: http://www.craterlakelodges.com/pages/cratercam.htm (Thielsen peaks over the rim about 1/3 of the way from the left.)
Click on small image to see larger image.
