Sixty years in the making, the newly opened Blue Mountains Trail follows a point-to-point path for 530 miles through breathtaking and rugged wilderness in Northeast Oregon.
The trail has already been thru-hiked by four people. Whitney “Allgood” LaRuffa, Naomi “The Punisher” Hudetz, and Mike “Iron Mike” Unger finished the trail in 32 days, with two days off, in early October 2020, and provided information that helped revise parts of the trail before it officially opened in November 2020. The fourth thru-hiker, Renee “She-ra” Patrick, completed the trail Oct. 30, 2020, and also provided feedback.
Whitney describes the trail as a rugged journey through changing landscapes, from desert conditions to high alpine peaks. Parts of the trail pass through wildfire-burned sections choked with debris. Salmonberry and poison oak crowd the trail in other sections.
Total elevation gain is 85,000 feet, with 86,000 feet of elevation loss. There are no flat sections.
And the Blue Mountains Trail is not for novice hikers. Route-finding skills are required in some areas. Resupply is a challenge because of the trail’s remote setting. Whitney, Naomi, and Mike resupplied using a support vehicle that followed them on a jagged east to west route from Joseph to John Day. Water sources are on average about 20 miles apart. They rarely saw anyone else on trail.
But the trail does have opportunities for shorter loop hikes, notably in the popular Eagle Cap Wilderness and on the Elkhorn Crest National Recreation Trail.
The window for a thru-hike is small, from late August to late September. Snow can fall on the higher peaks throughout the year. Temperatures in Hells Canyon in August can reach triple digits.
The trail connects Wallowa Lake State Park near Joseph in the east to the community of John Day in the west, and passes through seven wilderness areas: Eagle Cap (Oregon’s largest wilderness), Hells Canyon, Wenaha-Tucannon, North Fork Umatilla, North Fork John Day, Monument Rock, and the Strawberry Mountains.
It traverses Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, the deepest gorge in North America and the last-free-flowing section of the Snake River, and passes through the ancestral lands of the Nez Perce, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, and Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.
The trail was conceived in the 1960s as an 870-mile loop around the Blue Mountains, with a network of bed and breakfasts for hikers. Roadwalks were part of the loop.
The Greater Hells Canyon Council, formed in 1967 to stop the construction of two dams on the Snake River through Hells Canyon, began working on the trail in the 1990s, and changed it from a loop to a point-to-point hike with limited roadwalks.
Jared Kennedy, Blue Mountains Trail project lead, worked with the four thru-hikers on trail revisions and continues to update trail information and recruit volunteer trail maintainers.
Corporate sponsors such as Oregon-based Six Moon Designs are providing financial support for the trail.
For more information and to sign up for trail news and updates, visit the Blue Mountains Trail website. More resources, including maps and trail guides, will be published on the website in the coming months.
Whitney, Naomi, and Mike talk about their thru-hike here and here.
Featured photo by Whitney LaRuffa