I had spend the fall, winter, and early spring of 2016 hiking Arizona prominence peaks. Upon our return to Oregon in the late spring I was ready to focus on hiking Oregon prominence peaks. A large number of such peaks lie in Southwest Oregon in the Siskiyou Mountains, Southern Oregon Coast Range, and Western Cascade Mountains.
I decided to make my first peak bagging trip to the Siskiyou Mountains. I assembled a list of peaks, gathered maps, trip reports, and key GPS waypoints to help me access these peaks.
Olson Mountain
On May 17 I drove to and hiked Olson Mountain in the Western Cascades northeast of Medford. This peak has 1860 feet of prominence, the 94th most prominent peak in Oregon.
The first challenge was to navigate the forest roads to drive to near the summit. I had viewed satellite images of the forest roads to help sketch out a possible route. I marked this route with waypoints on my topo maps of the area. This research proved to be very helpful and I was able to find my intended “trailhead”.
From my parking spot I hiked up a short jeep trail. I wandered about the brushy and indistinct terrain of the summit to identify the highest point on the mountain. I finally satisfied myself that I had found it and retraced my route back to my Jeep.
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