A short, but STEEP hike up Wake Butte in Sunriver, Oregon

See, it's pretty even if the guy who wrote the book says it's not.

We've talked about doing this hike before, but have never done it. It's too far of a drive to just do this hike, and we've never managed to tie it in with something else for whatever reason. We've only seen it in one hiking book, and the book doesn't put it in the best light. I'm not a huge fan of this book. He gives some inaccurate information as far as distance and difficulty. He apparently also gave some misinformation about the excitement level of this hike. He referred to the hike as having no scenic views and being mainly for people who cared about geology. We found the views to be quite scenic and we really enjoyed the hike. We both said that we were glad that we did it.

This looks like a giant turtle to me. The head is over to the left, and it's shell is the big thing the starts to the right of it. 

You can find it by taking Exit 153 on Hwy 97. You want to go towards Sunriver. That would mean you would go right if you're coming from the north and I would imagine left if you're coming from the south. Take the second exit at the roundabout which is essentially staying straight. A little more than four miles up the road, you'll go left. This will keep you on FS 40. About five miles down the road, you'll see a Wake Butte Trail sign. The sign is on the left and the parking area is on the right. We went in there and drove around the circle, but did not see anything that looked like a trailhead. There were no signs giving any information about the hike or pointing out where to start your hike. We actually left and then went down the road because we thought maybe we were in the wrong place. The book referred to this huge parking area for such a blah hike. We didn't think the circle looked like a parking area at all. We decided to go back in. When we went back in, I saw something that looked like a path. We parked and then inspected it. We decided it was indeed a path. I also pulled out my Pokemon Go app to check out the map since sometimes the trails will show on the map. I was able to see the start of the trail, but then it just sort of died. Then I saw what looked like the trail again after a little bit on the map. We decided to give it a whirl. Worst case scenario would be that we had to go back to the car.

This hike was short. It was less than a third of a mile up, but it was UP the whole way and it was steep! I had to stop several times to breathe and this thing was such a short hike! Based on the description in the book, I thought this would be more like Little Belknap Crater where it was mostly lava rock type stuff and little tree cover. This was pretty well covered in trees. There are giant rocks popping up here and there. At the top, it was gorgeous. With that said though, don't expect to have huge close up shots of the mountains like if you went to the top of Tumalo Mountain. The mountains are pretty far off in the distance. We went early enough in the year that they still had white tips on them so we could tell they were the big mountains versus just the foothills, but it was pretty. We saw a big bird flying around in circles. I'm not sure what kind it was, but he was not cooperating as far as his flight pattern went so the pics weren't that good.

Here's the bird!

There were no bathrooms at this place and we did not see any other people while we were there. We did another hike on the same day after this one, and it's not that far away if you wanted to tie some stuff together. We think this was worth the hike. The second hike we did, not so much! You can read about though if you want. This isn't that far from Lava Cast Forest too. We liked that one too!

There were a ton of Pokemon and I ended up getting a new to me Pokemon while we were there. We sent during the Rock even where the Rock Pokemon were more prevalent than others, but Rock type Pokemon were all we saw. I'm wondering if that area just has Rock type since it's a big rock. :)

Here's the map from Pokemon Go. See the gap there? I think the second part looks kind of like a duck or swan or something that swims on the water.

We didn't hook up my heart rate monitor or run any apps about the distance and elevation. I need to get that going again, but right now, I'm just happy if I manage to make it out the door.