I bet if you ask anyone who has hiked the Pacific Crest Trail through Oregon if they made time to stop and visit the Dee Wright Observatory while crossing the summit of the McKenzie Highway through the Willamette National Forest, you will most like get a blank stare. The what?
I imagine if you ask most people who have visited the state of Oregon if they know where NASA conducted drills with astronauts as they prepared for travel on the moon in 1964 you will get some skeptical looks. The moon?
I remember hiking through the middle of Oregon on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2014 knowing I was going to hit a section of lava between Santiam Pass and McKenzie Pass. Hikers I had followed talked about how it ate up their shoes and wore down their spirits.
But nothing prepared me for the sheer beauty and wonder that awaited me in the Willamette National Forest. When I think of forests, I think of trees and green. Not black and red lava rock with tiny patches of lichen defiantly showing signs of life as far as the eye can see.
I had a zero at McKenzie Pass waiting for my resupply and my friend Elizabeth to join me for a week, so I decided to follow the road up from the Lava Camp Lake campground to a place a passing day hiker had told me about the day before. He said no one ever goes but it is the most amazing place to make time for.
And he was not exaggerating. One, had the place to myself in the middle of August. And two, the history and views from the top of the observatory were breathtaking. My pictures do not do justice!
Inside the main part of the observatory, there are labeled slits in the lava rock walls that allowed me to peep out at the surrounding craters and peaks. The structure is named for Dee Wright, the crew lead who died the year before it was finished in 1935 by the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC).
Once on top, a sundial directed my eye to the landscape sprawled out before me in every direction, from Mount Jefferson and Washington to North Sister with its Collier glacier, the largest in Oregon. I could not only look back at where I had traveled from but see all the mountains nestled behind their tall summits.
After visiting the observatory, I took a stroll on the half mile Lava River National Recreational Trail through the lava flow of the Yapoah Crater. It is 8 miles long and believed to be only 2,700 years old! It is made up of a type of lava called A A lava, a Hawaiian term for lava that has a rough broken clinkery surface. Like how ice breaks up when water flows beneath it, the lava below is solid and massive.
I remember for the rest of my hike and that summer, sharing about my experience at the Dee Wright Observatory and all the other hikers saying they didn’t have time or hadn’t stopped by. Most when I told them about it said they wished they had made time!
This post was written in one hour for the #naturewritingchallenge. Check out Twitter to learn more or see my other posts from the challenge here. You can learn more about this underrated place on the USFS website. Know that if you plan to visit, the highway is closed during the winter and is two lane. This is more of a scenic drive than a throughfare from east to west.
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