I'm working on climbing Oregon's 100 highest peaks. A helpful list can be found here:
http://www.glassmountains.com/clm_or100.html
A number of the peaks are in the Cascades, and, as these destinations are closer than most (a plurality of the 100 peaks are high up in the Wallowas, far out by car, and far up by trail), I'm whittling down the Cascade peaks a little faster. Two of them are Howlock Mountain and Holly's Ridge, near Mt Thielsen and Diamond Lake.
I had hoped for snow-free conditions (snow adds an unpredictable element to mountain trips that I prefer to avoid, unless, of course, I'm ski mountaineering on a normal ski route), but, after getting snow updates from helpful Oregon Hikers, my friend and I decided to call it a "snow climb" and take ice axes, crampons, and helmets. We briefly used the helmets (for rockfall protection), but ice axes and crampons were unnecessary. In fact, I think this particular route might benefit from snow cover, because, in places, snow travel was faster than wading through brushy, alpine white-bark pine.
Here's a link to a gmaps pedometer route I've created that shows the planned route, which we followed pretty closely.
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=7103258
Here's our route:
We hiked up to Thielsen Camp from the Howlock Trailhead. Under the highway and through the woods:
Shortly after the trail became mostly obscured by snow drifts, we stopped at Thielsen Camp, and enjoyed views of Mt Thielsen, almost directly overhead. We also found a bit of open creek, where we filtered water; we arrived at camp so early that we decided to hike on up to camp on the flat at Holly's Ridge.
We hiked up through the trees, following the route that looked best from Google Satellite imagery, which turned out to be steep but luckily quite shady, because the day was hot at this point. We got a look at the ridgeline from one vantage along our ascent.
Holly's Ridge was excellent walking, sometimes in small trees, sometimes along pumice flats:
We made camp at the large, flat saddle, and enjoyed views of our route towards Howlock Mountain for the following day...
... as well as views of Mt Thielsen (which, we had keep reminding ourselves, we'd climbed years before, from its other side):
After dinner, we casually walked up to the summit of Holly's Ridge, in increasingly windy conditions:
From the summit of Holly's Ridge, we had more great views of Thielsen:
It was an eventful night: my climbing partner had to take down her tent at about 1am because the strong wind threatened to knock it down. It was the windiest camp I've ever enjoyed, though I was mostly protected by not using a tent or tarp, and by setting out my bag in the lee of a white-bark pine:
After rising, we had more great views of, you guessed right, Mt Thielsen:
I overestimated the amount of time our off-trail travel would require, so we rose early and got on the way quickly. Walking the ridge between Holly's and Howlock was a real joy: a perfectly lovely high elevation romp, with no difficulties or navigational problems:
The last push up to the Pinnacle of Howlock was slow going in soft pumice soil:
After lightening our packs at a convenient rock near the southern toe of the Pinnacle, we scrambled up to the summit, which we think is the highest of Howlock's several summits (more beta below, for those who are interested in tagging these little known peaks):
Believe it or not, I barely ever ride a mountain bike.
