Fresh perspective on familiar peaks

Jul. 12—Mountains are boring.

They just stand there, after all, insensate as the stones of which they are constructed.

But for the occasional volcanic eruption or landslide, mountains can hardly be said to move.

People, on the other hand, tend to get around.

We scurry about, hither and yon, even when our every detour into a gas station leaves us feeling as though we ought to have received an escrow statement in addition to a receipt.

Our itinerant nature does quite a lot, I think, to enrich the reputation of mountains. It also has much to do with our fascination and affinity for high places.

Certainly our mobility, which allows us to see mountains from every conceivable vantage point, infuses them with a compelling personality they otherwise would lack.

This is not to suggest, of course, that mountains never change.

Nature can remake a peak's visage rapidly, needing just a few minutes of waning sunlight to transform the dull white of a snow slope into the brilliant pink of alpenglow.

It is of course an optical illusion, but the Wallowas, which I can see well from my driveway, sometimes appear to my eyes something like half again as large, and as near, depending on the quality of the light, the absence or presence of clouds and snow cover, and probably other physical factors I can't name and don't understand.

Other alterations are less immediate but equally entrancing.

When the tamaracks turn in late fall their yellowing needles, even from many miles away, paint swathes that didn't exist in spring or summer.

The effect is even more vivid in places such as Steens Mountain with its broad groves of quaking aspens.

But those accoutrements, the snow and the glow and the colorful leaves or needles, are temporary — seasonal shifts akin to a man who cultivates a beard only in winter.

To fully appreciate mountains, it seems to me, requires that you see them from a variety of directions — or at least from the four cardinal points.

The differences can be dramatic.

Take, for instance, Mount Jefferson, Oregon's second-tallest summit at 10,495 feet. This dormant volcano in the central Cascades, when seen from, say, Redmond to the east, hardly seems to be the same peak that I grew up gazing at from my hometown of Stayton, well west of the mountain, near where the Willamette Valley gives way to the Cascade foothills.

From Redmond, Jefferson's ridges and faces converge at the summit in what appears to be a single spire — a classic pyramidal shape.

But from the west, the great gouge that glaciers have cleaved from the mountains' midsection is conspicuous, and Jefferson's summit ridge culminates in two pinnacles which seem, from a great distance, to be about the same height.

Jefferson's more ancient, and heavily eroded, volcanic neighbor to the south of Santiam Pass — Mount Washington, which geologists believe almost surely is dead rather than dormant — boasts an even greater variety of visages.

From Santiam Pass the peak has something of the Matterhorn in is dart-like shape, albeit with a summit more akin to a thumb than the tip of a knife as with the Alpine eminence.

But seen from the east, near Sisters, Mount Washington is a dome with a sharp tip in its center.

The differences aren't so distinct from the west or south, but from both directions the mountain could be taken for a different peak altogether.

I had occasion to ponder this matter of mountains, and their many faces, while hiking on Saturday, July 9.

The subject in this case, though, wasn't a single mountain but rather a range — the Elkhorns. My backyard mountains, both figuratively, in that they are the ones I visit most often, and literally, as I can see a section of the range from my own yard.

The site was the eastern side of Gorham Butte, a modest summit — it tops out at 6,176 feet — a couple miles north of the Anthony Lakes Highway.

Gorham Butte, despite its singular name, is actually a spine of high ground with a few separate summits, two on the south end and a third at the north, with a saddle between.

The butte is the highest point between Baker Valley to the east and the Elkhorns — not a foothill, exactly, but sort of an intermediate summit. It's also a hydrologic divide, with the Antone Creek drainage to the south and Anthony Creek to the west and north. The latter stream, which drains from its namesake alpine lake, follows a glacier-carved canyon that runs nearly due east until it reaches the base of Gorham Butte, which forces the stream to flow northwest for a few miles before it resumes its easterly course.

I picked Gorham Butte for the hike mainly because the route, along a road I didn't recall ever traveling, was on the east side of the ridge, and I reasoned, or so I told my wife, Lisa, and our son, Max, that there would be more cooling shade.

Which it was.

What I didn't anticipate was the fresh perspective the road lent to the familiar peaks of the Elkhorns.

But first we had to climb about 350 vertical feet, on sometimes steep grades, along Forest Road 7320-050. Once the road reaches the aforementioned saddle, though, it's either flat or slightly downhill.

Just north of the saddle the trees thinned slightly and the views opened to the west and south. We stopped, and I needed a few seconds to figure out what I was looking at.

The view of Twin Mountain, in particular, was so different from what I'm used to that I didn't recognize it right off.

The granitic peaks around Anthony Lakes, sculpted into horns and pinnacles by Ice Age glaciers, are a reliable landmark, but even those familiar peaks weren't in quite the right order, so to speak. Once I had picked out Gunsight Mountain the rest fell into position, as it were.

Yet each summit seemed just strange enough from our vantage point that I felt as though I were seeing each anew. Van Patten Butte was broader than I was used to.

Most notably for me, though, was Angell Peak, the spire that looms above Angell Pass on the Elkhorn Crest Trail about two miles south of Anthony Lake. The scree slopes on the peak's east side were almost completely snow-covered, and as I processed the scene I realized that I was looking directly at the spot where the Crest Trail was hacked through the granitic outcrops and boulders on the climb to the pass.

I knew, even more than several miles away, that the trail was largely, if not completely, covered by snow that has persisted longer than usual due to the chilly spring.

It was a curious sensation.

But also a pleasant one, rather like encountering a favorite old friend in an unfamiliar city.

Besides the surprising vista of the Elkhorns, the road is also a fine place to get an overview of the Anthony Burn. In July and August 1960, a lightning-sparked fire burned about 20,000 acres between Gorham Butte and the Ladd Canyon Road. It was one of the larger blazes in Northeastern Oregon during the 20th century, and in the fire's wake much of the land was colonized by lodgepole pines that, more than a half a century later, form all but impenetrable thickets over much of the area.

We could hear the roar of Anthony Creek, still swollen with snowmelt, several hundred feet below.

It was a beautiful July day — a few harmless cumulus, pleasantly warm but refreshingly cool in the shade.

I was reminded that although I prefer trails, hiking on roads — even roads that, like 7320-050, are open to vehicles — can be rewarding as well.