Found the top of Mt. Bailey today. My first Volcano this spring. Very exciting! Mt. Bailey at 8,368 ft sits on the west side on Diamond Lake in central Oregon.
Mt. Bailey and Diamond Lake from the top of Mt. Thielson
There are a few different ways to approach the summit of Mt. Bailey, we took the southeast ridge route. You can drive to the end of a forest road and the hike would only be 2.5 miles each way. With high hopes, we drove up that way to no avail. Snow blocked our path within a mile. So we retreated around to the east side, drove up another road to try to shave off a few miles of dirt walking. The GPS said the trail was only a 1/4 from where we parked, so we bushwacked our way through the trees, over a stream, through some spider webs and up a hill. After all the clambering around we finally found the trail around noon. A little late for skiing volcanoes. After a couple of mile of walking with skis on packs on the dirt trail we found the road we could have drove to the end of and from there continuous snow! I believe it was around 6,080 ft.
Up and up we hiked through the trees, never very steeply. The trail is super easy to follow. There are blue triangles on the trees every fifty feet or so. The only real tough part is you never can see the mountain until you are basically on top.
Jamie with Mt. Thielson hiding in the clouds
Me with the first view of the summit on the right
From here, you can either crawl along the ridge over the rocks or walk around the back of the crater. We chose the later.
Jamie on her home made splitboard rounding the beginning of the crater.
Me walking up the edge of the crater. There were tons of snowmobile tracks everywhere. I guess they can drive right up to the summit.
The top of the SE ridge was pretty cool. We took our skis off to hike around some rocks, then on up to the big round summit!
The snow was half melted off the summit. It was beautiful up there!
Me on the rocky part of the summit
Jamie!
We hung out for a bit, ate some lunch, then skied down the big east facing bowl and followed a snowmobile track out. That track brought us right back to the forest road where we met up with the trail and donned tennis shoes back to the truck.
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