Sand Ridge was the first of 3 I did while doing a quick spontaneous one night camping trip to Wood River at Jackson F Kimball State Park. After setting up camp, we went to scout it for the next day but were able to get close enough I decided to hike up and activate it that evening.
Summary - I first hiked Lookout Mountain via the usual route, High Praire Trail, Tim N7KOM as part of a two day outing that included SOTA summits 6001 and Badger Butte.
Summary - Most folks drive to the Larch parking lot and walk up to the observation platform. This is the long way up. You will start from Multnomah Falls on I84 and climb 4200 feet over seven miles.
Goat Mount is a nice steep ridgeline hike. The total distance from the trail head is just over a mile with an elevation gain of 1500 feet. The peak is line of sight to much of Portland, so 2m contacts were plentiful. There are many nice trees for HF antennas.
This is another summit I activated with my mountain bike and in this case that turned out to be a mistake as the bushwhack to the top is very steep, very thick, and not at all fun to do in bike shorts and shoes with spd cleats in them.
The network of roads that accesses this summit are minimally maintained, and the final approach road isn't maintained at all as there is no active tree harvesting happening at the time I activated the summit. Expect the final access road to continue to degraded and grow over. When I activated this, I was able to ride my bike to the highest point on the road but had to lift it over a large blowdown that you won't be able to drive past or lift a motorcycle over. if you're feeling ambitious, you and another experienced sawyer could get it with a 24" bar.
Start at the Lewisburg Saddle in the OSU research forest.
Dean Mountain, also labeled on some maps "Dear Mountain", as in Dear Mountain it's been such a long time, sorry I haven't written.
Vineyard Mountain is 2 miles north of Corvallis, OR. Its an easy,
summit for beginners.
From Corvallis, travel north on OR-99W till reaching the "City
Limits Store" at Lewisburg (red light). Turn left onto Lewisburg Rd.
for 1.3 miles. Then, take the right side fork onto Sulfur Springs Rd.
Go another 1.3 mi up to Lewisburg Saddle. At the Saddle, there is
parking for maybe a dozen cars. It's a popular and crowded place.
Go slow near there.
From the trailhead at the Saddle, head NNW on Nettleton Rd. #500.
Most of the difficulty with these peaks is the drive not the hikes. The road to Lookout Mountain is not bad and can easily be done by itself. But if you are activating 6001 or Badger Butte, might as well go for the hat trick. For a total hike of 5.4 miles with 1400 feet of elevation gain, you get 16 points. Bring a GPS on 6001 and Badger Butte for the bushwhacking.