JWnet - Red Cone, Radical Hill, Wise Mountain cabin, Saints John

Saturday, August 23, 2025
Red Cone, Radical Hill, Wise Mountain cabin, Saints John

The goal for today is Red Cone. Weather is unknown. While rain and fog is acceptable, lightning is not. The morning opened to calm, clouds, and some mist - but no lightning. Ahead we drive. The weather ended up being quite nice and we kept to the plan of the above timberline trails.

Down in town - the sky is grey with low clouds. Will Red Cone be fog?

US-285 - getting up into the mountains and out of town a bit - some blue.

more blue sky as the day warms

Aired down and moving

Still a fair bit of cloudy sky - but there's promise
(I somewhat hope Red Cone will be fog - that would be unique)

At least the chance of lightning is near zero.

Sitting ahead was a full size side-by-side - with portal axles. These are aftermarket bolt-on adapters. They give several inches of lift to clear rocks.

A NICE covering of GREEN (not dead) pine trees.

Near timberline - the "right braid" of trail.

still climbing.

Up high enough to look along the base of the clouds

Red Cone, ahead, fogged in.

A treat to see different weather as it's typically a blue sky day event.

Right near the top - parked vehicles barely visible.

And we get here and the fog rolls out. Shucks - I was hoping for full cloud cover to have a unique experience. I recall, years back, standing at the south rim of the Grand Canyon, in a good snowfall, tossing a snowball into "some big hole that should be out there - but was completely hidden in white".

People gathering at Webster Pass. We will arrive from the right edge of the picture.

A nice Red Cone mountain view - easy to see where it gets the name.

Looking down-valley towards Montezuma. The trail in the picture is an easy trail - not what is on the docket for today. Radical Hill - heading off the left edge of the picture is the next to travel. It has three difficult rocky sections down low and one attention grabbing off-camber shelf road higher up.

Jason at one of the rock obstacles. The portal side-by-side behind.

Sorry, no rock obstacle pictures - I was focused on getting over them. I'm down one wheel (three wheel drive) with the right front tire free-wheeling. I thought I could easily enough run the trail this way and not need to change to a fully operational wheel hub to have full 4-wheel drive. In the end, I was able to run the trail with 3-wheel, but it would have been easier with all four propelling.

The cabin's hanging in there - but for how long?

The loft bedroom

Red truck drives the tippy, off-camber section across a tailings pile.

Looking back at Red Cone, Webster Pass, and the Radical Hill cabin.

Our turn for the off-camber tippy section.

I'm "riding the berm" about 80% up the side for a bit less lean. Just under 20 degrees of lean - perhaps a few more degrees for the ahead Jeep.

It does not sound like much, but looking out the door to the slope, I don't want to tip.

Always fun to keep a bag of chips sealed until the top of the mountain - how firmly puffed will it get? Will it hold or will the bag pop?

While I do not know where this bag was packaged, Salem Oregon is the address. Salem has an elevation of 177 feet. Atop Radical Hill is elevation 12,618 (12,441 feet higher).