Trail Advocates

Key Stats for the Skookum Lake Trail - 542

About

Trail is accessed by way of Thunder Mountain Trail 543 or Baty Butte Trail 545.  A great trail and a great destination.  The mileage on the FS info sheet is incorrect.  The trail is approximately 1.65 miles in length (each way-round trip is about 3.3 miles).

When you come down from Thunder Mountain, below the rock field on the west side of the trail, you will arrive at a small meadow. Turn right here (east) to go to Skookum Lake.  The location of the trail junction is shown on the topo map, and a waypoint is included in the GPS track. Heading west from here will take you on a long abandoned route to Baty Butte.

Skookum Lake is named with the Chinook jargon word which originally meant a strong or powerful deity, and later came to mean simply strong or stout. When used in connection with localities, the word skookum generally indicated a place inhabited by a skookum, or god of the woods. It sometimes meant a place used as a burial ground.¹

Directions

Trail is only accessible from the Thunder Mountain Trail. Please see that page for directions.

¹Oregon Geographic Names, McArthur, Lewis.

Trip Reports

Photo	Date	Report Summary
📷	Sep 1, 2025	A visit back to see an old friend I took a friend out to check out this trail, as I hadn’t been in a number of years and it holds a special spot in my heart. The trail itself is in really good shape (shout-out and thank you to those who are putting in the effort to keep it maintained, it is much appreciated). Salmonberry is getting a little brushy in spots, and there is a han...
	Jul 19, 2025	Lots of brush work done recently Brushy areas near the lake have been all cut out. Trail is in really good shape - no logs down.
	Oct 19, 2024	Post Sandstone fire updates Portions along the hill coming down from Thunder Mountain were affected by the Sandstone fire, but they have been repaired. There were a few logs down, but nothing not easily stepped over. The only somewhat difficult areas are the brushy areas closer to the lake – if it has rained you will get wet in those areas due to the brush.
	Aug 18, 2023	Trail in great shape! Trail has recently been logged out and is in good to excellent shape. There are a couple of brushy spots but they are short and easy to traverse – most of the trail is in GREAT shape. The trail down to the lake is a bit rougher although all the logs are cut out – a few areas are really brushy but relatively easy to get thru as long as you pay a...
	Jul 3, 2015	Brushy and quite a few down logs Trail is very brushy in spots and had quite a few downed logs on it. Most were easy stepovers, but two sections were very messy. One is a tough crawl under (3 logs) and one right before the lake was a huge mess of blowdown – that one you can go around, however. Most of the downed logs were near the lake. Road to the trailhead is in very good shap...