The Three Sisters, a trio of volcanic peaks each over ten thousand feet, stand over the town of Sisters, and the town makes an easy base for one of the most satisfying loops in the Pacific Northwest. Sisters sits on the dry eastern side of the Cascades, where ponderosa pine and juniper replace the wet forest on the other side, and its main street is lined with wooden storefronts in an old-west style. Every July it hosts an outdoor quilt show that fills the streets with hundreds of hanging quilts and thousands of visitors, which tells you something about the town's sense of humour.
The loop it anchors links two passes. McKenzie Pass, on Highway 242, climbs from Sisters through pine forest into a vast field of black lava, a jagged sea of rock that flowed from nearby volcanoes in the last few thousand years. At the summit, the Dee Wright Observatory, a lava-rock building from the 1930s, has window openings aimed at each peak on the horizon, and the view of the Cascades from the roof is spectacular. The west side descends in tight switchbacks through old-growth forest to the McKenzie River valley. The road is narrow and twisty, with limited sight lines, and closed to long vehicles and by snow from roughly November to early summer.
From the McKenzie valley, Highway 126 and then US 20 lead back over Santiam Pass, a gentler and faster climb through lakes, burn scars from recent wildfires and views of Mount Washington's sharp spire and Three Fingered Jack. The wildfires of 2020 changed parts of that landscape, and the contrast between living forest and charred trunks is stark.
Sisters has about twenty-five hundred people, with fuel and plenty of cafes and bakeries, and Redmond, thirty miles south-east, is the nearest larger town. Early mornings are crisp and clear, afternoons can be hot, and thunderstorms occasionally roll across the mountains. Late June to early October is the usual open season, with September light and fewer crowds particularly good.