Camp Lake Trail one of Oregon’s best

A trail that passes miles of burned trees leads to an unburned land of high mountain lakes in central Oregon’s Three Sisters Wilderness Area.

It’s a magical place, with sweeping views of the big volcanoes beneath cerulean skies when the sun is shining. And if the sun isn’t shining, you may not want to be there anyway because it takes an eight-mile one-way hike to reach the Chambers Lakes basin, nestled at 6,900 feet above sea level. It can be a tough place to visit in bad weather.

Begin the hike at the Pole Creek trailhead, 11 miles southwest of Sisters. This was the site of the biggest forest fire in central Oregon in 2012, but the trail is in good shape and the land is slowly returning with life. Just be mindful that there is an off-trail and camping prohibition in the burned part of the wilderness. Hiking on windy days could be dangerous with falling branches.

This impacted my hike, because I had planned to carry a tent two miles to Soap Creek, camp there for two nights, which would put me in a better position to hike into the upper Chambers Lakers Basin. As it turned out, I had to camp close to the trailhead and this limited my hike to the first lake, Camp Lake, in the lower basin.

But it was a worthy destination indeed.

The trail offers impressive views of the North Sister and then the Middle Sister as it crosses Soap Creek and the North Fork of Whychus Creek. Both were running milky from the fire-scarred landscape and meltwater from Hayden and Diller Glaciers.

Camp Lake Trail, Three Sisters Wilderness Hiking to Camp Lake between South Sister and Middle Sister in the Three Sisters Wilderness Area of the Deschutes National Forest.

As the trail levels out, Camp Lake comes into view, nestled between the South Sister and the Middle Sister. Meltwater from a snowbank west of the lake provides clean drinking water.

It was a busy place to camp on a Saturday night in late August, but also a place where you would want to spend as much time as possible, weather allowing.

Find the trailhead by driving Oregon 242 for 1.5 miles west of Sisters, then take Road 15 signed for Pole Creek for 11 miles to the parking area. Hike two miles south, then turn right at a junction just beyond Soap Creek. The eight-mile, one-way hike gains 1,800 feet, but does it gently except for a short section just after the crossing of Whychus Creek’s north branch.