Broken Top is one of the volcanic mountain located near Bend in central Oregon. Its name came from the fact that the top of the mountain was broke off with jagged edges. The mountain is located in Three Sisters Wilderness, and it is located very close to Mount Bachelor and South Sisters. Broken Top hiking trail is not as popular as South Sister, but there is still a trail the goes all the way to the top of Broken Top. In addition, the hike to Broken Top is not as strenuous as the hike to South Sister Summit. The elevation gain is only about 2000ft over 7.5 miles from Todd Lake. Since it was already September near the end of the summer, we decided to do the Broken Top hike as the last long hike that we do this year.
We left Portland and headed to Bend right after work. The traffic on the highway was much better than what we expected. We were thinking that perhaps most people had already left Portland to enjoy the long weekend. We were able to get to Bend within 3.5 hours at around 9:30PM. We did not stop at Bend however. We continued further and headed towards West on Cascade Highway to get to Devils Lake. This is where the trail head is for South Sister Summit. We planned to stay here overnight in the car and do the Broken Top hike early in the morning.
When we got to Devils Lake, it was pitch dark and there was a lot of cars in the parking lot already. It was almost full but we were able to find a nice spot. As we got out of the car, we could see so many stars blinking in the night sky above us. The milky way was stretching over the sky. It was so clear.
As we walked around to get prepare to rest, several more cars came to the parking lot. The people were here to do the night hike to South Sister Summit and asked me how to get there. We were surprised with the number of people doing night hike at this time. It was probably due to the long weekend.
We rested in the car over the night. We brought thick blankets with us as the night did get very cold after midnight. We lowered the back of the car seat so that it would lay more flat to get us more comfortable, but it could not get completely flat unfortunately. During the night, we seemed to have accidentally hit the button to open the trunk and that scared us a bit. Luckily, it was us who accidentally opened it and it wasn't someone else who tried to do so. At around 5:30AM, we woke up and could see the twilight in the sky. We got up and started to get ready for the hike.
We drove the Todd Lake at around 6:00AM since this is where the trail head is to get to Broken Top. From Todd Lake to Broken Top is about 7.5 trails. We would first hike on Todd Lake trail, and after 3.5 miles, we would switch to Broken Top trail. There is a shorter trail to get to Broken Top. This shorter trail requires people to drive further in into the wilderness on a poorly maintained forest road and requires high clearance vehicle. Although we did drive an SUV, we did not want to risk it. Besides, we didn't think 7.5 miles with 2000ft elevation gain was a big deal.
The previous 3.5 miles was mostly in the forest. Starting from Broken Top trail, we were within the deserted wilderness of Three Sisters. We could see miles and miles of wilderness and could not see a single soul. It felt very quiet and felt like we were isolated from the civilization. We continued on Broken Top trail and there were few parts where we had to step on the stones to cross streams of river. After about an hour walking along the trail to get to the backside of Broken Top, we finally got to the bottom of Broken Top to get ready to climb upwards. This is also the intersection between the long trail and the short trail, and we started to see more people here since most people would do the short trail hike.
From here, the trail started to climb a bit, but not too steep. This part of the trail was filled with volcanic ashes with streams of water running through. We also saw several dogs enjoying its time running around along the flat surface. It was a great scene to see. One of the large dog actually ran towards us and gave us a cute hop. We bet that he probably smelled the jerky in my backpack.
The final 0.25 miles to get to No Name Lake was probably the most difficult part of the hike. The trail was steep with a lot of lose rocks on the trail. We had to be a bit careful when going upwards. This part was very short however and we finally reached No Name Lake. This lake is located at the top of Broken Top and is formed from the melted snow at Broken Top. The color of No Name Lake was not as clear as I thought however. It was a bit dirty looking color, probably due to the volcanic ash.
From No Name Lake, we continued further for about one more miles to get to the North side of Broken Top. From the ridge on the back side, we could see South Sisters, North Sisters, Mount Washington, and Mount Jefferson. It was an amazing view. We highly recommend to hike 1 more miles after reaching No Name Lake so that you could get an amazing view of Cascade mountains.
Overall, we had an amazing time hiking this trail. It took us about 3.5 hours to go from Todd Lake to the top of Broken Top. When we got back to Todd Lake, it was about 1:30PM. We were physically tired, but pushed ourselves to get back to the trail head. We highly recommend doing this hike to enjoy the wild. If 7.5 miles is too long, the shorter hike of 2.5 miles is always available.
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