The nice thing about climbing Black Butte is that the road puts you halfway up the mountain before you have to start walking. What would be an eight-mile round trip from the base becomes a four-mile round trip – which is doable between breakfast and lunch, or between lunch and dinner. Or, like my hike recently, between dinner and dark.
It takes only half an hour to reach the Black Butte trailhead from Sisters – which was fortunate because the sun was already dropping toward the cloudy horizon. The gravel road up the Butte is in good condition. Only the last half-mile or so require a bit of obstacle-dodging...
