Pilot Knob is a quiet peak inside the boundary of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and a stone's throw away from the Pacific Crest Trail. The approach is just short of 2 miles one-way, with some travel on an old trail and some bushwhacking.
The drive is about 1 hour and 15 to 30 minutes from somewhere in Portland. The hike is about 2 miles one-way with 1300' elevation gain and took about 1.5 hours to complete in the dry season.
Maidenhead Mtn (W7W Summit 1930) is accessible with a 1.5 mile (800 ft vertical) hike up an abandoned Forest Service Road bed. The road bed is overgrown with trees that look around 8 years old. There is a trail that is established for about 50% of the way. The second half of the route has a significant amount of blowdown and really slows you.
This was summit #2 for the day after SC-102. You could do neighboring Black Butte also, I just missed the turn and went to this one first. Nice short trek up the forested west ridge from a wide parking/camping area with large fire ring. Only about .30 mi up. Plenty of space to set up. Pretty flat with timber. One interesting thing with the AZ here is all maps say this summit is over 3600', not 3580'. However the trek is so easy and short getting to the top is not difficult.
I did the first activation of Sheridan Mountain in July of 2015. I wrote up a quick trip report for the NASOTA group and planned to write a more detailed trip report later, but I lost my notes for the activation. Sheridan has not been activated again. I am writing this trip report now with the hope that someone will find it useful. Sheridan is not an easy summit to get to or climb, but it's not that hard either.
Let's sart with my original trip report and then I will add some commentary from memory.
The 5140 summit is a pleasant one mile hike from FR-2610 in the Ochoco National Forest. The turnoff to FR-2610 is right off of Hwy 26 and about 22 miles East of Prineville. I activated in the winter on snow shoes, I found a road bed for the hike up that may allow a near drive up in the summer.
I took my kids on a snowshoeing adventure this past weekend. There were several SOTA activators scheduled to be out activating and we joined them for a fun time. The distance is around 1.7miles one way but we had very nice snow conditions.
Traffic was very heavy heading up to Mt. Hood and several vehicles turned around but we persevered and it eventually improved. It did add around 30mins to our arrival time.
Starting from the Frog Lake SNO-PARK and heading across the hwy slightly to the north is the Pacific Crest Trail crossing.
Bunsen Peak is an ancient volcanic cone characteristic of Yellowstone National Park. The peak is a very popular summit hike in Yellowstone Park near Mammoth Hot Springs. The trail is wide and even in October I found folks I could tag along with per the guidelines of not hiking alone in the Park.
Point 118 hosts a Missoula County communication site. It is a rocky prominence with excellent views of the distant Selway- Bitterroot Wilderness’ rugged northern mountains. Access is by foot or bicycle on a permanently gated road. The summit is approximately 200 feet from this communication site.
Turner Mountain in northwest Montana is approximately 22 miles north of Libby on Pipe Creek Road #567. Turner ski area opened in 1961. It is currently active with a mile long double chairlift with 2100’ of vertical rise. The 1.8-mile vehicle access road is closed in the summer but open to mountain bikes and foot travel. I borrowed an ebike and rode to the summit via the reasonable grade ‘jeep road’.
