This is the Elk Mountain east of Gray's River, WA, just off WA Highway 4.
Turn off is exactly at mile marker 22 on WA 4; turn south onto a broken asphalt road and in about 1/4 mile you come to the Hancock Forest Management gate. There is nothing prohibiting non-vehicular entry--just no camping and no campfires. Plenty of parking near the gate.
Chapeau to WJ7V, Jeff for discovering and documenting this trail. A couple notes on activating this summit via Mountain Bike.
- The road surface has some sections with quite large (3-4") gravel which makes traction quite challenging.
- There are some hike-a-bike sections, but overall a fun biketavation
See http://www.pnwsota.org/blog/k7agl/2025-june-30/jumbo-peak-wa-june-2025 for the write up of Sunrise and Jumbo Peaks double activation.
The double summit activation of Sunrise Peak and Jumbo Peak is under 9 miles RT and 3500 feet vertical climbing. My milage was off a bit due to probing for a south approach on Jumbo. There are a number of trip reports floating around on the web, I would rate this activation as an “advanced” SOTA adventure. I started from Sunrise TH 262. Google Maps routed me to this TH with no issues. It took me 1.5 hours to get to the trailhead departing from Mossyrock, WA.
0.2 Miles, +150 feet
This is an easy, pleasant summit. The road is suitable for most vehicles and the hike up is through an open meadow/clearcut.
Following is a description:
From Hwy-2 & the McGinnis Meadows Rd just east of the USFS Pleasant Valley Campground:
Sleeping Bear Dunes Naional Lakeshore has a number of SOTA summits - Shauger Hill might be considered to be in the heart of the Lakeshore. Note That the official NPS map shows "Shauger Hill" (E on the map) quite a distance from the USGS coordinates used by SOTA.
Take M-109 off of M-22 and check in at the entrance station - this is a fee park. I recommend getting a copy of the Lakeshore map to follow the one-way Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive and the numbered features.
Dry Mountain is a drive up summit near the Burns-Hines area with a lookout tower and cabin. To get there I recommend this route:
Turn north off of US-20 at 43.5467, -119.0847 onto NF-47, aka Hines Logging Road.
At 43.64275, -119.2629 turn west onto US-41, aka Donelly Road.
At 43.7038, -119.3953 turn onto US-4120, aka Beaver Slide Road.
Stay on this road until you find a lookout tower.
The road is very good to good until the last half mile or so where it gets a bit rough. Possibly not Priusable, but easy in a Rav4 or higher clearance vehicle.
Summary - This traverse starts from the Silver Star trailhead (45.78080, -122.24362) and links Silver Star Mountain with 3977 (Discriminator). Covering roughly 8.5 miles and 2800 ft of elevation gain, it has amazing views, some steep sections, and a bit of scrambling. Do 3977 first to get the toughest part of the hike behind you, enjoy the big views on Silverstar and have a mostly downhill walk back to the trailhead. From SE Portland to the trailhead is about ninety minutes. Caution advised when planning the drive: FR41 is not Prius-friendly.
I was surprised to find an accessible peak in CM that the Bend SOTA folks had not yet activated. I did the activation as a snowshoe, but you can drive up a lot closer to the summit if there is no snow. As you ascend, the forest growth increasingly closes in, so basically, just park when you can't take any more scratching up of your paint. It is a very pleasant 2.8 mile hike from the main road. I've posted a GPX track you can download. I posted summit pics to SOTA Atlas.
