Long hike to the top

Getting there

Half the fun is getting there. As reported earlier, many of the routes are blocked by private land. We secured permission from two private property owners (don't ask) to access some logging roads to the southeast of Onion Peak. I think those lands are owned by Longview Fiber, but I'm not sure because we didn't see any signs on the route we took. This route was 23 miles round trip, but it had to be done. Walking the logging roads is so much easier than bushwhacking that we were willing to take on some extra distance. Even with the logging roads, there were two places we had to bushwhack and scramble to go from one road to another. The first was a clear cut which was anything but clear. It was an uphill obstacle course suitable only for elk. The next bushwhack was over about 1/3 of a mile between roads and similarly difficult. There were a few flags on that route, but otherwise the path was not clear, so some backtracking was required to get around obstacles such as two-story boulders.

To the top

We followed the logging road to the end to take in the view. Then we returned to where the road first reaches the approach to the peak (about 200 yards before the end of the road). The entrance to the trail was not clear but we quickly found pink flags spaced about 6 inches apart to mark the trail. Clippers would be handy for some of the brush (although the Nature Conservancy would frown on that).

We stayed on the pink route until the trail split with orange markers to the left and pink to the right. We followed the pink flags and went to the right. We came to a high point that looked like a dead end with real peak about 200 yards away and a jumbled ridge in between. Thinking that we should have taken the left turn, we went back to the fork and followed the orange markers to the crevice. The first step was a little tricky so I ditched my backpack and used the rope to get started. From there it was very steep, but climbable. At the top some branches block the path so it took some moves to get past those. Shortly after that we arrived at the same high point we had just left. My wife spotted a pink flag below, so we climbed down and continued scrambling along the ridge until we reached the peak.

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