TLDR: 4 Day Backpacking Trip Duffy Lake, 4th of July 2025. Nice warm weather, limited thunderstorms. Great float tube fishing at Duffy and Santiam. Good short, day hikes to Mowich and Santiam Lakes.
Here is a map of the area. Red trail highlights in & out route, blue trail highlights day hikes.
- Trip Type: Luxury Backpacking
- Trip Dates: 4th of July, 2025
- Trip Location: Mt Jefferson Wilderness
- Permit Required: Central Cascades Wilderness Permit
- Distance: Approx 3.5 Miles Each Way (7mi roundtrip)
- Party Members: Devon, Chris
- Camping Options: Abundant
- Weather: Sunny, Limited Thunderstorms
- Other Conditions: Snow banks @ Approx 5000 Feet, Abundant Mosquitoes
- Bonus Points: 1 (Wildlife & Wildflowers)
- Demerits: 0
- Pack Weights: Devon 62 lbs, Chris 50 lbs
We visited Duffy Lake for the 4th of July this year setup as we normally are for a comfort+ luxury backpacking adventure. The trip was a 4 day, night short backpacking adventure. Due to various timing conflicts and other near-term trips, only Devon and Chris were able to make the trip. This trip to Duffy Lake was planned around April of this year as one of our target locations for the Cascade Wilderness Permits. We will have 7 or so more of these permitted trips through the rest of the permit season this year, so there should be a bunch of reports showing up here over the summer.
This trip started late on Wednesday, and we didn’t get out of town until around 2:30PM. We chose to stop at the McKenzie Station Restaurant in Mckenzie Bridge. The Brisket Burger was a very good choice and the Chicken Cordon Bleu was just OK, we will be stopping here again on future trips. Based upon my last couple of visits, the food is better than the Obsidian Grill across the street and a great option if you don’t want Pizza from Takoda’s down the road.
Day 1: After eating and getting situated at the trial head (which had about a dozen cars on a Thursday evening, further evidence of popularity) we started hiking right around 6:30PM or so. The hike is a nice 3.5 mile or so gradual total uphill climb of just under 1000 feet (according to GPS mapping) with a starting elevation of around 4000 and ending at around 4800. The mosquitoes were out in force and a lot of bug repellent was required on this adventure. On the day hikes we took we did also run into snow banks at around 5000 feet, and it looked like they would get more substantial quickly if going higher in elevation beyond the day hikes we took. It looks like it will be a banner year for huckleberries as they are green and growing all over. Also the wildflowers were stellar during the trip, many varieties were in peak bloom especially in the meadows and stream areas. The bear grass appears to be in a bloom year as well, with our trip taking us from barely seeing blooms starting to peak bloom near the lakes.
We were able to a good main first camp spot off to the left of the trail about 1/2 way down the lake. There are many better spots at the lake, but after doing a reconnaissance mission, in which nearly every other spot was already taken (not a surprise coming in so late) we were just glad to get a spot at all. The first night was fairly standard in getting camp setup, limited snacking and enjoying the fire before going to bed. There was a visit from a deer at our camp on the first night, which has happened on a few occasions this year.
Day 2: This day consisted of a slow start, with a good pancake and ham breakfast. From that point we explored the area and later took a day hike up to Mowich Lake below Red Butte. I have been having a bit of pain in my left foot and so the distances were kept to a minimum. At the bridge crossing the Duffy outlet we found a bird protecting its ground next, which we think was a Killdeer. There were four pretty little eggs in the nest which was awesome to see! Mowich is a nice lake to hike to, with great views and shallow warm areas to relax. There are small beaches available on the shore and it is a good swimming lake (Devon jumped in). We also had an adjacent snow bank to make a mountain lemonade & raspberry slushy and chill our beers. The distance is only about 1.3 miles with around a 330 ft elevation gain. Red Hill sits directly next to the lake and is a great target for a nice view its about another 1.4 miles from Mowich and 800 feet, but worth the trip for great views of Mt Jefferson and Three Fingered Jack. If you continue (we did not) past red hill, you can go around another 1 – 1.5 miles and enter the Eight Lakes Basin, which is a beautiful backpacking destination. This evening was the most spectacular of sunsets, that is the main post image. This also produced some thunderstorm activity and a bit of rain overnight. Luckily we were prepared for this. The lightweight tents did fine, though I will say that they are certainly 3 season tents and can withstand limited inclement weather.
Day 3: Another somewhat slow starting day, with a full backpackers breakfast before any day trips. Devon then loaded up nearly his full pack for the day trip over to Santiam lake so that we could hang out for the day and he could do a good amount of float tube fishing. So this morning was where we landed the bonus point, as in combination with our camp deer and the Killdeer nest at Duffy we found another much smaller birds next with eggs near the trail! That was two nests with eggs in a single trip, which is very rare indeed. The decision to bring the tube paid off for him as he did well fishing with a nice couple of trout caught in just about 1.5 hours of fishing in the middle of the afternoon. We were also able to locate a snowbank here so that we could make a lemonade slushy and chill our beers. While the beers were chilling here we paid the 2025 fourth of Jully classic wilderness disc golf tournament. This year it was held at Duffy and Santiam Lakes (mostly Santiam) and we played 5 holes in the hillside meadows surrounding the lake. It was an excellent game with an open course, vast distances (we had a par 6! hole) and wonderful mountain views. In the end I took the win here with a +1 score to Devon’s +3. After that we had our lunch snack and packed up, headed back for our camp at Duffy. On the return trip, we did take a side detour near Duffy which goes to Duffy Meadows. Here we saw very spectacular displays of wildflowers and extremely hungry mosquitoes, so they were somewhat hard to enjoy.
Day 4: This was the last morning, which was pretty standard. Devon did choose to fish again this morning. We had oatmeal and did take our time in leaving camp to head back to civilization. I believe we left camp around 10:30 and were back to the car just after noon. We chose to get Pegasus Pizza in Eugene for our meal on the return trip.
Meals:
- Day 1 Dinner: McKenzie Station Restaurant
- Day 2 Breakfast: Backpackers Breakfast, Ham & Pancakes With Freeze Dried Raspberry
- Day 2 Lunch/Snacks: Cheese, Crackers, Salami, Oysters
- Day 2 Dinner: BBBBBBB Burgers
- Day 3 Breakfast: Bagel Breakfast Sandwiches (Egg, Bacon)
- Day 3 Lunch/Snacks: Bagels with Lunch Meat
- Day 3 Dinner: Ground Beef Mac and Cheese
- Day 4 Breakfast: Oatmeal, Nuts, Berries, Syrup
Games:
- Ten Thousand: Chris 2 – Devon 0
- Yahtzee: Chris – Devon 2
- Wilderness Disc Golf: 4th of July Classic @ Duffy & Santiam Lakes. Scorecard: Chris +1 – Devon +3 (5 Holes)
People: Dozens of other people coming and going all weekend. Many campsites were taken or exchanged during the trip. We could have moved to a better camp location at Duffy Lake on a couple of occasions, being there over 4 days gives opportunities like that if you want to expend the effort. There was also a forest service volunteer checking permits at the trail head. We did get visited by two state police, day hiking to Duffy to check for fishing licenses.
Fishing: Devon woke up early the first morning to fish and continued fishing both days morning, afternoon and evening with good success after about 1 – 2 hours of being on the water in most cases. He caught many fish over the weekend. The float tube was instrumental to getting out and on the fish. He also took the float tube on Day 3 over to Santiam Lake and had good luck. Mowich Lake was too shallow to fish well from shore. He reported that it was hard to catch fish at the lakes, unlike some earlier trips this year but when caught the brook and rainbow trout were good fighters and were generally 13 – 14 inches in size. He did also find that switching colors of his spinner from a bright color to a brown with gold helped at one point.