Mount Thielsen lightning rod summit
— — the spire the storms keep coming back to.
Not only on a wall.
“A worn volcanic horn rising above Diamond Lake, its summit spire so often struck that climbers find fulgurite — rock fused by lightning — in the cracks near the top. Hikers who reach the saddle stop there. The last forty feet are a class-four scramble climbers rope for. From the studio.
Mount Thielsen lightning rod summit, on ceramic.
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The place, in three passes.
Mount Thielsen rises to 9,184 feet on the Cascade crest in southern Oregon, the eroded remnant of a shield volcano that went extinct roughly 250,000 years ago. Glaciers stripped away the softer outer cone, leaving the harder central plug as a steep horn above Diamond Lake. The peak sits inside the 55,100-acre Mount Thielsen Wilderness on the Umpqua National Forest, just north of Crater Lake National Park, with the Pacific Crest Trail crossing its western flank.
Climbers and geologists call Thielsen the lightning rod of the Cascades. Its sharp summit pinnacle draws strikes often enough that the rock at the top carries fulgurite — glassy tubes formed when a bolt fuses the silica in stone. The Mazamas mountaineering club, founded in 1894, has logged the route since the late nineteenth century. Storms build fast off the Pacific in summer afternoons, and parties on the spire turn around at the first dark cloud on the western horizon.
The standard route leaves the trailhead off Highway 138 near Diamond Lake and climbs about 3,800 feet over five miles to the summit. The first 4.5 miles is a walk-up through hemlock and lodgepole; the final pitch is an exposed class-four scramble on weathered breccia. Most parties carry a rope for the last forty feet. The wilderness permit is free and self-issued at the trailhead. The route is generally clear of snow from mid-July through September.