Hemlock Butte Cabin

At the end of the Hemlock Butte Trail, in the snow at the base of Mount Bailey, stands a three-story A-frame with a wood stove on its ground floor. Benches are set around the stove. The middle floor is for sleeping, and the top floor holds light storage and is reached by a ladder fixed to the wall. There are no beds, no electricity, and no drinking water. The one pot provided is for melting snow, and guests melt snow to drink, to cook, and to wash. An indoor outhouse holds a vault toilet.

This is Hemlock Butte Cabin, in the Diamond Lake Ranger District of the Umpqua National Forest, near Diamond Lake in Douglas County, Oregon. The Forest Service calls it a three-room cabin. Recreation.gov calls it “a very primitive backcountry winter experience” and asks that those who stay there be experienced in winter backcountry travel.

Eight to a night, and the woodpile

From November through April the cabin is held by permit through Recreation.gov, and only reservation holders may use it. Both the Forest Service and Recreation.gov give its capacity as eight people a night. A hiking writer on The Outbound says the cabin “is said to be able to sleep 16.” The eight often come from several different groups, and a party of two holding a single night may share the floors with six others.

Guests carry in sleeping bags and pads, a camp stove, cookware and utensils, lanterns or flashlights, matches, a first aid kit, extra toilet paper, and garbage bags. They carry out all trash and food and are expected to leave the cabin clean. Pets are not allowed in the cabin or the surrounding area. Volunteers of the Edelweiss Ski Club and Forest Service staff supply firewood for the stove. It cannot be restocked in midseason, and Recreation.gov warns that it may not be available and asks guests to burn it sparingly. An outdoor fire ring stands beside the cabin.

Four miles from Three Lakes Sno-Park

The winter way in begins at Three Lakes Sno-Park, about 84 miles east of Roseburg on OR-138 and some 2.5 miles down Highway 230. An Oregon Sno-Park permit is needed to leave a car there between November 1 and April 30, and it is sold at Diamond Lake Resort among other places. Recreation.gov puts the trail from the lot to the cabin at four miles. The News-Review, in 2018, put it at about three and a half miles, mostly on Forest Service roads. Over-snow access typically runs from late December through March and varies from year to year. Recreation.gov states that snowmobiles are not permitted on the Hemlock Butte Trail. The Forest Service page lists snowmobiling among the trail’s uses, along with cross-country skiing and snowshoeing.

Recreation.gov rates the route a challenging backcountry ski. On a clear day it gives views of Mount Thielsen, Mount Bailey, and the rim of Crater Lake. Mount Bailey belongs to the Cascade Range. It is a shield volcano topped with a 2,000-foot tephra cone, and it averages 600 inches of snow a year over some 6,000 acres of ski terrain. Pine covers its lower slopes and gives way to hemlock and fir higher up. The peak rises above treeline to 8,363 feet. From the cabin, advanced skiers make the two-mile climb to the top, gaining 3,300 feet, and Recreation.gov warns them of avalanche danger.

Blue markers in summer

When the snow is gone, the cabin sits a few hundred feet off a summer trail to Bailey’s summit. Abbey Reddy, writing for The Outbound, describes the route from a trailhead at 5,200 feet. The trail climbs 1.6 miles through forest to an opening with small outcrops and a view of Diamond Lake and Mount Thielsen. About a quarter mile farther, blue markers in the trees on the left lead off the trail to the cabin. By her account the cabin is free and unlocked in summer and fall and needs no reservation from May through late November, though she advises checking first.

Above the cabin the trail crosses a road at the upper trailhead. It then climbs 2.7 miles past treeline and a large crater to a false summit. A faint ridge path over cinder and scree continues to the true summit. It passes a rock window that frames Diamond Lake and Mount Thielsen and ends with a short scramble.

Built by the Edelweiss Ski Club

The Edelweiss Ski Club built the cabin. It is a Douglas County club whose members mostly ski cross-country and backcountry, and some also snowshoe, ski downhill, or snowboard. Recreation.gov gives 1990 as the year the cabin was built. The News-Review, writing in January 2018, said the club built it in the 1980s, in cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service.

The club had about 35 members in 2017. It met through the ski season, from late November through March, and took day trips to Diamond Lake, Lemolo Lake, and the upper Umpqua. Scott Spiker of Roseburg was then a member of three years and sat on the club’s board. He told the paper: “We don’t really get a lot of snow in Roseburg so it’s nice to get out of the rain. And just by driving an hour-and-a-half to Diamond Lake you’ll find real winter conditions for skiing.” Members stayed at Hemlock Butte often, and the club planned several days there in February and March 2018. Spiker was also working with the Umpqua National Forest toward a ski patrol station, where club members could stay while helping the Forest Service with signage and patrolling the trails.

Mark Rochester, the club’s president, told the paper that the cabin “has proven to be extremely popular, and reservations, through the Forest Service, fill quickly each year. People and groups come from all over the state and beyond to stay there.”

“It’s nice because we have a place we can stay so we can be together and have a nice getaway,” Spiker said.