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Oregon’s second-tallest mountain has been hiding. Fires in 2017 and 2020 burned the easiest route to Mount Jefferson, closing the Whitewater Creek Trail for eight long years.
This past winter, I snowshoed up that trail to see if “Jeff” was still OK.
In summer, Jefferson Park is a basin of wildflowers and lakes, overpowered by the mountain. I was excited when the Willamette National Forest announced the Whitewater Trail would open in the summer of 2025.
Hurray! I rewrote my hiking guidebooks to celebrate the news.
But the access road and trail did not actually open until November, and snow blocked the route the following week.
Perhaps I have been more frustrated about this than most. I grew up in Salem, and for my family, Jefferson Park was a second home in heaven. Each September, my parents would backpack there for a glorious last weekend of alpine summer. The lakes were chilly, but swimmable. The flowers had faded, but the meadows blazed red with the turning leaves of mountain huckleberries. And the great glacier-clad mountain embraced it like a wall.
January is no time to visit Mount Jefferson. But the sun was shining last January, so I packed the car with snowshoes, picked up a diehard adventure chum, Dave Reuter of Eugene, and set out to see how far we could get.
Highway 22 is plowed all year, but the Whitewater Trailhead is 7.4 miles up an unplowed spur, Road 2243. If you want to visit, the turnoff is 10 miles east of Detroit or 21 miles north of the Santiam Y junction, between mileposts 60 and 61.
The Whitewater Road goes up the south-facing side of a canyon where the snow melts out on sunny days. We were able to drive within 0.3 miles of the trailhead before a drift stopped the car.
There were no trees to block the sun. The fires had left snags, and then the Forest Service had logged the valley with huge clearcuts, leaving stumps and debris. This, of course, was part of the reason the trailhead was closed for eight years.
After the fires, the Willamette National Forest supervisor complained she had spent her budget fighting fire, and had no money left for restoration work. She proposed to pay for it with timber sales, cutting anything within 100 feet of a road – even green trees.
Environmental groups sued, arguing the Forest Service should not be in the business of paying for operations by selling the very forests it is supposed to protect. The supervisor retaliated by leaving roads and trails closed. During that time, when outsiders could not see what was happening, loggers were let in to cut what they could.
We strapped our snowshoes to our backpacks and walked the final 0.3 mile to the trailhead, a parking turnaround with a cement outhouse. Signs warned that dead trees could fall at any time on the trail ahead. It’s obviously true. Black snags line the trail as it switchbacks uphill. You have to climb over recently fallen rocks and logs every quarter mile or so. But green plants are clawing their way back between patches of snow — Oregon grape, snowbrush and beargrass.
I remembered the first part of the hike to Jefferson Park as viewless. Not anymore. The huge craggy white cone of Mount Jefferson looms between the blackened trunks. After 1.5 miles, the trail crests a pass where the Sentinel Ridge Trail joins from the left.
There’s a nice new signpost in the pass, but in January the trail itself is lost under 3 feet of snow. With no trail, we simply snowshoed straight toward Mount Jefferson. We followed a ridge east a mile to a spectacular snowy knoll with a full-frontal view of “Jeff.” What a hunk! Peering over his right shoulder were all Three Sisters — distant, shy voyeurs.
This viewpoint knoll is where winter visitors should turn back, because the next 2 miles of the trail cling to a dangerously steep slope. We kicked steps into the snow for the 2-mile traverse, but if we had slipped, we would have slid off a 300-foot cliff.
Still, the urge to revisit Jeff Park’s Eden was strong. When we finally reached the Pacific Crest Trail, exhausted, with only three hours of sun left, we slogged onward through unburned alpine groves and snowy meadows to the edge of the park.
There, we discovered Jeff Park is a cold, dark hole in January. The low sun never rises above the mountain. This is not a season you want to be caught here for the night. Wearily, we turned back, fearing tiredness might make our feet slip. The sun was an orange bead on the horizon when we finally reached the car, exhausted.
Mount Jeff saluted our effort with the warm alpenglow of evening. Without his forest clothing, Oregon’s hidden mountain really knows how to blush.
I returned to the Whitewater Trail in April for a second visit, this time with skis and backpacking gear. Our group camped in Jefferson Park, exploring the area when it was under snow. Here’s a video from that trip:
I’ll be back in summer. The fires really did skip Jeff Park, so the flowers should be as glorious as ever. But if you just can’t wait — and you’re prepared for a serious snow adventure — there’s a special thrill in visiting “Jeff” in the lonely heart of the off-season.
