Pilot Butte, Bend, OR

We recently made our first visit to Bend, Oregon, in the high desert just east of the Cascades. It was a quick overnight trip in which we visited a number of breweries the first afternoon and explored a little of Bend the following morning.

As we were driving through town visiting breweries, we kept seeing a big hill (a volcano, actually) just east of Highway 97, the road that separates east Bend from west Bend. At the hotel, I found that the volcano is called Pilot Butte and that there is a series of easy trails to the summit. The cinder cone of an extinct volcano rising 500 or so feet above the city, Pilot Butte is now a state park called the Pilot Butte State Scenic Viewpoint.

After our beer-a-thon the evening before, we really needed to get out and stretch our legs, so over breakfast, we decided to walk up to the top before heading out of town back to McMinnville.

Pilot Butte, a Volcanic Cinder Cone

One of the primary motivators for me in taking this walk was that this was my first stay in the high desert of Central Oregon and I really wanted to check out the somewhat alien landscape. I have spent time in west Texas, northern New Mexico, the Sonoran desert in southern Arizona, and the high plains of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho. I was looking forward to seeing how things differ here in Oregon. Something about barren, austere, arid, and harsh open spaces is very attractive to me.

This part of Oregon is populated mainly by western junipers and steppe scrub, which most people refer to generically as sagebrush. In reality, three primary shrubs make up the scrub here: gray rabbitbrush, antelope bitterbrush, and big sagebrush. At this particular location, I saw very little true sagebrush.

Gray Rabbitbrush, Ericameria nauseosa, Blooming

Rabbitbrush Seed Heads

Antelope Bitterbrush, Purshia tridentata, Leaves 

Many people confuse bitterbrush and sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) because both have tri-lobate (tridentata) leaves as you can see in the photo above. But sagebrush, being an artemisia and like the artemisias that people cultivate in their gardens, has wooly, almost blue-green gray leaves. Sagebrush leaves are generally much more elongated than bitterbrush leaves in my experience. Sagebrush, from a distance, looks a lot like lavender.

Yarrow, Achillea millefolium, Grows Everywhere

The vast majority of the trees at Pilot Butte are western juniper, which is expanding in range thanks to our fire suppression efforts. These very thirsty trees, when left unchecked, will outcompete most other species in arid climates. Wildfires used to keep them under control while the more fire-resistant ponderosa pines would survive the flash fires and thrive. Even so, old junipers twist into some very interesting forms in the landscape and are pleasing to look at.

Western Juniper, Juniperus occidentalis, Scrub

Robins were Feeding on Juniper Berries

This particular species of juniper, while immediately recognizable, is not one that I have seen before because its range is limited primarily to central and eastern Oregon. Even more interesting is that I have never seen a mistletoe growing on a conifer before, yet the trees at Pilot Butter are full of hemiparasitic mistletoe.

Juniper Mistletoe, Phoradendron juniperinum

Juniper Mistletoe Close Up

Higher towards the summit of Pilot Butte, there are a few ponderosa pines scattered about randomly. When I first encountered ponderosa pines as a teenager in the southern Rockies, I was told that if you smell the bark, you can get hints of vanilla or butterscotch. I have never been able to get any scent like that, but still these trees are easy to recognize with their long leaves and bark that goes orangey (some people say cinnamon-colored) with enough age (like 90 years).

Distinctive Ponderosa Pine Needles in Bundles of Three

Ponderosa Pine Bark Starting to Go Orange

What soil there is out here in the high desert is really poor. And that, coupled with the natural aridity from being in the Cascade rain shadow, really limits vegetation. The soil changes as you go up the hill, with the bottom being gravelly, parts of the middle being sandy, and towards the top, mostly pyroclastic cinders, none of it really good soil.

Iron-Rich Volcanic Cinders

Visting Pilot Butte was a chance for us to give Grace a short walk. She can no longer handle the long walks, but short ones like this, about 1.8 miles all told, are just manageable. She curled up and passed out in the car when we were done.

The views from the top were pretty interesting, but also obscured by the low cloud cover to the point where we could see none of the big volcanoes of the Cascades. Even so, I was impressed with how many cinder cones and other volcanic structures that I could see in the distance.

Cinder Cone in the Distance

There was little in the way of wildlife on the butte, not surprising because there were a lot of people there walking in the late morning. Moreover, as a land-locked city park, it is cut off from other wildlife habitat. We saw a single chipmunk scurrying with raised tail and a few birds, mainly robins scavenging juniper berries. A Steller's Jay, on the eastern edge of its range in the Cascades, did entertain us with its shrieking and carrying on.

Steller's Jay

Looking Like Eyes, Evidence of a Fire

Quaking Aspen

Pilot Butte is very busy, the most visited state park in Oregon east of the Cascades. It's a really nice urban walk, being surrounded by the city, but it isn't a place for solitude. The trails are easy to find and walk but you won't get much exercise on the less than two mile loop.