The Hikes of 2018 – A Look Back

It’s hard to believe that it’s time for another year end wrap up. This will be our 6th such post since we started this blog in 2013. It’s even harder to believe that we still have so many hikes yet to do before we are finished with our long term hiking goal of completing at least some portion of all 500 of the featured hikes in William L. Sullivan’s five “100 Hikes…” guidebooks.

A goal we are closing in on is visiting all 45 of the accessible designated wilderness areas in Oregon. (Three Arch Rocks and Oregon Islands, both off the Oregon Coast, are off limits to visitors,) We now have just seven wilderness areas left to visit after spending time in the Rogue-Umpqua Divide (post), Steens Mountain (post), Strawberry Mountain (post), and Copper-Salmon (post) wildernesses this year.

With so many different hikes available we were once again able to spend most of our year exploring new trails and areas. We took hikes on 61 different days, 51 of those days were spent on trails (or sections of trails) that were new to us this year. Six additional days were partially on new sections of trail while just four days were repeated hikes.

Many of our hiking days consisted of multiple stops this year which resulted in a nice round 100 separate “hikes” varying in length from a quarter mile at the Pillars of Rome (post) to 20.3 miles in the Waldo Lake Wilderness (post).

Of those 100 hikes 89 were brand new, 6 were partially new, and 5 were repeated. The number of repeated hikes is 5 and not 4 because Saddle Mountain was done on the same day as three new hikes (post). Below is a map showing all of our stops.

Hikers=Trailheads, Houses=Tent Sites, Binoculars=Short Walk/Viewpoint

Although the majority of our hikes were done in Oregon we did manage to spend one day each in Washington (Falls Creek Falls), California (Lava Beds National Monument), and for the first time Idaho (Jump Creek Falls).

Falls Creek Falls

Lava Beds National Monument

Jump Creek Falls

We did spend more time east of the Cascade Crest this year compared to years past including trips to SE Oregon in June (amazing scenery/horrible roads), the Strawberry Mountains in July (beautiful but HOT), the Elkhorns in August (mountain goats galore), and Klamath Falls in October (lots of wildlife). Our other vacation was a trip to the Oregon Coast in September (Bandon = new favorite coast town). Hiking in so many different areas once again provided us with a wide variety of scenery.

Cape Meares Lighthouse

McDonald-Dunn Forest

Lower South Falls – Silver Falls State Park

Balsamroot at Memaloose Hills

Perham Creek – Columbia River Gorge

White River Falls

Deschutes River near Macks Canyon

Buck Canyon – Rogue-Umpqua Divide Wilderness

Mt. Thielsen

Cascade Mountains from Black Butte

Salmon River

Frustration Falls – Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness

Malheur Wildlife Refuge

Peter French Round Barn

Coffee Pot Crater – Jordan Craters

Timber Gulch

Owyhee River

Pillars of Rome – Rome, Oregon

Chalk Basin

Borax Lake

Borax Hot Springs

Steens Mountain and the Alvord Desert

The Island and Lake Billy Chinook

Emerald Pool – Bull of the Woods Wilderness

Horsepasture Mountain Trail

Bagby Springs Trail

Boyd Cave

Pine Creek Trail – Strawberry Mountain Wilderness

Volcanic ash – Strawberry Mountain Wilderness

Strawberry Mountain Wilderness

Slide Lake – Strawberry Mountain Wilderness

Jefferson Park – Mt. Jefferson Wilderness

Elkhorn Crest Trail

Summit Lake – Elkhorns

Rock Creek Lake – Elkhorns

Waldo Lake

Rigdon Butte

Broken Top, The Three Sisters, Mt. Washington and Three Fingered Jack from South Pyramid Peak in the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness

Carl Lake – Mt. Jefferson Wilderness

Hole-in-the-Wall Park – Mt. Jefferson Wilderness

Mt. Jefferson & Goat Peak – Mt. Jefferson Wilderness

Umpqua Dunes

Bandon Islands

Copper-Salmon Wilderness

Tahkenitch Creek

Huckleberry bushes – Diamond Peak Wilderness

Mt. Hood

Devil’s Garden

Sprague River

Tule Lake

Petroglyph Point

Mt. McLoughlin

Salmon Creek Falls

Footbridge over Falls Creek

Washington Cascades from Red Mountain

Klamath Falls on the Link River

Spouting Horn – Cape Perpetua

Forest Park – Portland, Oregon

Waxmyrtle Marsh

Siuslaw National Forest

In addition to the great scenery we saw a wide variety of wildlife and a fair number of wildflowers despite it not being the best year for them. Instead of including some of those pictures here we hope to post a separate 2018 wildlife and wildflower galleries soon.

We’re already looking forward to another year of hiking. If everything works out we will be checking off three more Oregon wilderness areas and a whole bunch of new hikes in 2019. We’ll be doing one or maybe two hikes a month from now until mid-Spring. Since we won’t have a lot of trips to report on during that time we’re hoping to do a few other hiking related posts including a more in depth look at our goals of visiting all the wilderness areas and checking off the 500 “featured hikes”.

We hope everyone has a great New Year and as always – Happy Trails!