Chaney Swiney

From a parking area just below the summit of Steens Mountain, this 2.5-mile hike (1.25 each way) descends 1200 feet into a cirque at the head of Wildhorse Canyon to the shores of Wildhorse Lake. The stunning geography of Steens is on display the entire way, with views over the Alvord Desert at the trailhead and a sweeping vista down the canyon below the lake. The area surrounding the lake is pr...

Starting at the Rim Village parking area, this snowshoe/cross-country ski trip (whichever you choose) heads out on snow-covered West Rim Drive, bound for the saddle between Hillman Peak and The Watchman, overlooking Wizard Island. The path is not terribly steep (this is, after all, a drivable road in summer), but it can be a bit long: four miles out and four miles back along rolling terrain is ...

Hobart Bluff is part of the Western Cascades, a range of weathered volcanic mountains that are much older than the High Cascades that most people think of today, the range of Shasta, Rainier, and Hood. These mountains are shorter as a result of the work of time and usually have summits wrapped in forest, but not Hobart Bluff. Here, the igneous rock outcrop stands above the manzanita, void of tr...

This is not an easy hike, but every step is more than worth it. Unlike Mount Thielsen to the north, this summit requires no scrambling/climbing; it's just a long, steep hike. Mount McLoughlin (named for John McLoughlin of Hudson's Bay Company and Oregon Trail fame) is a lava cone on top of a composite volcano, inactive for tens of thousands of years. Its slopes bear the marks of glaciation, and...

Starting on the AT at just under 6,000 feet and ending at Fighting Creek Gap, just under 2,300 feet in elevation, the Sugarland Mountain Trail is a grand descent from the high divide of the Smokies. The spruce-fir forest where the trail begins is a remnant of the last ice age, when a cooler climate meant that these trees were far more widespread along the Appalachians than they are today. Now, ...

Scenes like this are rarely so accessible. Heart Lake is nestled in a bowl below Castle Peak, on the edge of the Castle Crags Wilderness just west of I-5 and the city of Mt. Shasta. The parking lot and trailhead are both located on the shore of Castle Lake, a much larger lake that is stunning in its own right, backed up against a rugged wall of rock. Castle Lake is lovely, but Heart Lake is eve...

Black Butte is hard to miss from I-5 as it winds past the city of Mount Shasta. This lava dome formed roughly 9,000–10,000 years ago and isn't a cinder cone, though it does look like one. The rock that makes Black Butte was extruded instead of spewed, then broke apart as it cooled. The jumbled results of this volcanic event give the hike its character, never too terribly steep but always intere...

The Marble Mountains are part of the Klamaths, a biologically and geologically diverse range of peaks and ridges often overshadowed by its western neighbors in the Cascades. The Marble Rim is the signature feature of this subrange, a white wall of rock that glimmers in the sun. The nearby Sky High Lakes basin adds to the scenery, making this a great overnight trip, and perhaps an even better mu...