Tackling the Mountain

As I’ve mentioned, we’ve been coming to Diamond Lake for many, many years. Mt. Thielsen has always been an iconic photogenic landmark, a craggy beauty best viewed from the lakeside with beverage in hand. So when Rog suggested climbing the damn thing, I was a bit skeptical. But we’ve been working on getting in shape and with promises of, “we can turn around any time”, I was in.

We knew we weren’t going to actually summit the peak, the last bit is technical and recommended only for experienced climbers with fall protection. But it would be fun to see how far we could get. As it turned out, pretty durn far.

We made it here!

 The hike is about 10 miles roundtrip – five up and five down. J  The first part is a fairly gradual incline, winding through pine forest with increasingly more spectacular views of Mt. Bailey in the distance and Mt. Thielsen close up.  The Thielsen trail crosses the Pacific Crest Trail at 3.8 miles and we stopped there for lunch. We chatted with a hiker who’d been on the PCT 115 days, starting at the Mexico border heading for Canada. Puts my measly 10 miles into perspective, eh? 

Beautiful views of Mt. Bailey and Diamond Lake as you climb above the treeline. 

The first 3.8 miles is a lovely hike. 

After crossing the PCT, the Thielsen trail gets a lot steeper and more challenging. The trail eventually peters out completely and you climb an unmarked slope of loose volcanic rock. It was like trying to walk uphill on ball bearings! To add to the experience, the wind on the exposed slope was howling. I finally found a nice stable boulder with awesome views and called it quits at about 8500 ft. Mr. Mountain Goat continued on a bit further until he had to scramble hand over hand over boulders. At that point he’d climbed 8750 ft of Thielsen’s 9184 ft peak.

The last part gets steep and tricky.

Found a nice safe spot with great views and called it a day.

Fabulous view from my boulder.

 

Mr. Mountain Goat continues on.

 

Rog finally decided climbing this was not in the plan. 

Discretion being the better part of valor, Rog finally opted to “turn around and live to hike another day”, to quote Mark from Box Canyon Blog. It was an interesting experience and I logged more than 24,000 steps over our five-hour hike. (Worked off some of those not so free birthday calories, lol.) Next trip maybe we’ll tackle Mt. Bailey!

Mt. Thielsen

Wildflowers along the trail.

Very cool volcanic rock formations. Yes that is snow on the right. 

Random dead tree. :)