Vicki and I drove up the McKenzie Pass Scenic Highway and hiked on the Proxy Falls Trail, which passed by two waterfalls and a lava flow.
We woke up that morning in our campsite along the McKenzie River and got ready for another day in the Oregon Cascades. We weren’t in a big rush, so everything was mellow. We ate our food, packed our gear, and headed east along the river. We wanted to head up the McKenzie Scenic Highway, even though it was technically still closed for Winter. In mid-June! Sad but true. Just the same, eleven miles of highway was open, and we intended to take a day hike in the wilderness for a change. All this driving was getting old.
We were the only car at the Proxy Falls Trailhead. Luckily, I had my official Northwest Forest Pass, so we were allowed to park without paying any additional fees. Vicki hung it from the rear view mirror, while I got the daypack loaded with water and snacks. And away we hiked. It was a loop trail, about 1.5 miles long, and the trailhead instructions asked that we hike it counterclockwise. This probably makes sense when it’s crowded, not like today, but we did it anyway.
Soon we were hiking along within the Three Sisters Wilderness, on a path hewed from a lava flow. There were big chunks of rough lava all over the place, so we watched our footing.
It was Springtime, so everything was green and there were flowers everywhere. It was a joy to hike in this forest, and we were thankful for the cloud cover, as our elevation wasn’t all that high. We were far enough from the ocean that the days tended to get very hot, especially in the Summer. But it was nice that morning.
There was a side trail that led to Lower Proxy Falls. We hiked down it until we reached a perfect viewpoint. Or as perfect as the forest would allow. There were plenty of tall pines in the area, and they obscured the bottom of the falls a bit. But that was OK. We decided that hiking down to the actual foot of the falls would be a lot of work without much reward, as the best view was from here. Or so we told ourselves. The logic of laziness.
We headed back to the main trail and continued upstream a short ways. Another side trail, this time to Upper Proxy Falls, presented itself. This trail actually made it all the way to the base of the waterfall. There was a wide pool in a basin made of lava. The water from the waterfall came down to the pool and that was it. There was no outflow from the pool! Instead, all of the water was flowing downward through cracks in the floor of the basin. At least at this flow rate. During a rainstorm it would undoubtedly flow over the lip of the lava. We liked it.
The final part of the loop was quite a bit hotter. The clouds were mostly burned off, and there were shadeless sections of trail, especially when crossing the lava flow. Pretty soon we were back near the highway, and the trail paralleled it for the last tenth of a mile. And there was our car. We were still the only hikers that morning.
As we drove, we met our neighbor from last night, the one with the touring bicycle, right there on the highway. Apparently, the road was closed to car traffic, but there was no longer any snow up top at the pass. Bicycles were perfectly welcome. We wished him well on his cross-country trek, and decided to go uphill to see if the road was truly gated and locked. It was.
We really wanted to visit McKenzie Pass. It seemed to be an indispensable part of our Oregon Cascades Volcano Tour. The state website said that it would open on June 21st, the first day of Summer, every year regardless of the Winter’s snowpack. Lame but true. We vowed to come back up here no matter what, but first we would finish heading north through the Cascades, head west to the Pacific, then southward along the Oregon coast. By that time it would be Summer, and we would return to visit the summit of McKenzie Pass.
For a topographic map of the hike see my CalTopo Page
For LOTS more photos of the trek see my Flickr Page
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