Carpenter Mountain Lookout

CARPENTER MOUNTAIN LOOKOUT

Elevation: 5349 feet
Built: 1934, renovated 1995
Trail: 1.0, moderate
Staffing: Currently staffed by McKenzie R.D.
Rental status: non-rental
Geocache: GCGJQR

It was October 23, 2010 and a small crew of adventurous geocachers were taking part in Pablo Macs Mystery Geocache Adventure #1. The mystery was he would not tell us where we were going until the night before. This adventure took us up into the Cascade mountains northeast of Springfield, Oregon in the McKenzie river watershed. Our goal was to hike to the Carpenter Mountain lookout and find the geocache hidden there. This lookout, is situated atop a basalt plug, and offers an impressive view of the McKenzie River Valley and Wolf Rock (an exposed monolith). The Cascade Crest, Mt. Jefferson & Three Fingered Jack, the Three Sisters, and Mt. Washington are also within view from the lookout if the weather decides to let you see them. On this day, we expected to get rained on. Thankfully, although the weather was windy and cold, it did not rain at all during our trek. We parked at the trail head and our GPS receivers showed us being only 0.49 miles from the cache located at the top of the hill. However, the trail wandered around the mountain and covered a little more than 1.25 miles from the trucks to the top. The views from the lookout made the tough hike up the trail worth it. Here are a few of the pictures I was able to get during our trek.

These first few pics are just a couple hundred yards up the trail from the parking area.

Everyone is making it up so far.

Here was one of the first viewpoints along the trail.

Here the trail came out of the trees to cross this meadow.

There is our destination. This is the first spot along the trail that we could see the lookout itself. It looks like we are pretty close.

But, we were not as close as the last pic showed. Now you know what a "Basalt Plug" is. It is that big rock the lookout is sitting on.

A little closer still.

We found it! Our names are on the geocache log. The cache is just below the lookout down where some trees can actually grow and hide it. With that mission accomplished it was time to get up to the very top and enjoy the view.

This was one of the main views that I wanted to see on this hike. This is Wolf Rock. Wolf Rock is recognized as Oregon's largest monolith. This was the plug of an old volcano that has eroded away to the hard core. The rock towers 900 to 1000 feet above the surrounding area. I really wanted to see Wolf Rock from here because last summer, Pablo Mac and I climbed it to find the geocache on the top of it and we could see Carpenter Mountain lookout, as well and many other peaks, from there. I was excited to be able to see where we had climbed from this vantage point.

We spent about 45 minutes up on top at the lookout taking in the views and enjoying all Gods creation. Here is a picture of the crew with Wolf Rock in the background.

I had to throw in a couple more close-ups of Wolf Rock. If you want to get the Wolf Rock geocache, it is right there on that highest point in the middle of this picture!

This is not the route Pablo Mac and I took last year!

This adventure was not a physically challenging as climbing Wolf Rock was, but it was every bit as enjoyable and worth the effort. I had a great time with great friends and am looking forward to our next great adventure.