Tumalo Mountain – Attempted Sunrise Hike

I am bit behind in our trip reports. We were recently on vacation to take Dominique to college in Bend, OR and while we were there we worked in several hikes. Our first hike was an attempt to watch the sunrise from the top of 7775′ Tumalo Mountain. From the summit we hoped to have a view of Mt. Bachelor, Broken Top, and South Sister while the Sun rose over Central Oregon to the East. The forecast called for some clouds but we hopped that they would stay higher in the air and provide additional colors for the sunrise. The trail sets off from Dutchman Flat sno-park and climbs to the former lookout site on Tumalo Mountain in 2 miles.

We began our hike shortly before 5:30am and we could see the stars above our heads which gave us hope. The trail was fairly steep in places which combined with the elevation made it quite a workout. As we made our way up and around the south side of the mountain we could see a little light begin to show on the horizon to the East. We could also see some patchy clouds moving across our line of sight but looking up toward the summit we could see it was still cloud free.

That quickly changed though and soon we were surrounded by clouds.

It was cold and windy at the summit but we hung around from about 20 minutes hopping for a break in the clouds but one never materialized. We started back down at 7am and got back down below the clouds. Our best view of the day came at this point looking to the SE.

We didn’t get the sunrise views we were shooting for so we will have to try this hike again some other time. We still had 5 more hikes planned so we would have plenty of opportunities for views later. Happy Trails!

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