Baty Butte
From Oregon Hikers Field Guide
- Hikes to this location:
- Weather forecast: NWS/NOAA
- Maps: Oregon Hikers Maps Google Maps
- Latitude, Longitude: 44.9960, -122.2012
- Elevation: 5050 feet
Description
Baty Butte is at the western end of the 15-mile long Fish Creek Divide, with creeks flowing into the Molalla River to the west and drainages of the Clackamas River to the east. It's a short scramble to the summit along the south ridge from the Baty Butte Trail, with the last section involving a little rock scrambling and contorting around the summit vegetation. Baty Butte has a precipitous southwestern face, so don't get too close to that edge. The summit is on the far western edge of the Mt. Hood National Forest.
From the summit, you can see north to Mount Hood and the Washington volcanoes, but the views south are even more spectacular. All of the peaks of the Bull of the Woods, including Whetstone Mountain, Silver King Mountain, and Pansy Mountain, are before you backed by Mount Jefferson, Three Fingered Jack, Mount Washington, and the Three Sisters. An ammo box contains a summit register, which is signed by a handful of visitors every year.
A tent lookout was set up here in 1911, replaced by an L-4 cab in the 1930s. The lookout was one of the first equipped by an Osborne fire finder, and alidade-type device invented by W.B. Osborne of Portland, Oregon. The device was commonly use in the mid-20th century, and resurrected in the 21st, as a way of pinpointing fire locations to help ground crews. The Baty Butte Lookout was decommissioned sometime before 1950.
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- bobcat (creator)