After climbing Mt Adams we visited Hood River and then spent a day and a half at Smith Rock doing some casual cragging- what a beautiful area. The next climbing objective was South Sister down in Oregon. We drove out of Bend and up into the mountains, passing Bachelor (ski resort) and finally arriving at the trailhead- greeted by countless blood thirsty mosquitos.
We got a quick start due to the bugs and crossed the road (yes I'm sure that's the way) and up a trail next to THE creek (yes I'm sure this is the creek). Two stream crossings and twenty minutes later we realize this is certainly not the right creek. Be careful after crossing the road... you need to cross and walk down along the road for a few minutes and go up the next creek crossing. Fortuitously my GPS didn't have topo maps for this area, so it was difficult to know our mistake right away.
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| South Sister |
After our delay we hurried up the slowly rising slopes towards the climb- worrying that we might not have enough time to summit. I realized on this trip that there are several different types of "turn around times". We had imposed a "social" turn around time in order to arrive at our B&B with time to relax. "Social" turn around times are rubbish and are easily discarded... unless its raining. We reached the open flat slopes after breaking out of the gulley in the dense woods and got our first views of the route. A clear path was present up the clear red ridge extending towards us... it seemed fairly far away, but we were determined to see how far up we could get.
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| Our climbing route was visible after breaking out from the trees |
We proceeded up snowslopes and finally climbing behind the obvious triangular gray peak, which we were able to basically climb around the back of. From there it was a little scrambly up to the bottom of the red ridge, which we gained near the snout of the Lewis Glacier, which spills into a beautiful green colored small lake. I ditched the skis at this point- not wanting to mess around with skiing over the open crevasses that crossed much of the skiing that laid above. On foot, however, we stayed off the glacier and climbed directly up the Red Ridge (cleaver between Clark and Lewis Glaciers).
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| Our climbing route on the upper mountain (can you see Nicole?) |
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| There she is. |
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| Getting close to the rim |
Near the top we were presented with the most challenging portion of the climb, as the angle steepened about 200' below the crater and there was only one thin snow free line. We opted to kick steps, but this was a little difficult in places as the snowcover was a bit thin and sometimes icy underneath. We proceeded carefully up and made the crater rim without issue.
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| Nicole topping out on the crater rim- hope we don't get lost down below in that maze... |
The top of South Sister is actually almost directly across the crater, so we set off directly across. What a beautiful world on top of volcanoes. A flat reprieve from the climbing allowed a quick walk over to the base of the final scramble- a fairly simple climb up to the top.
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| Nicole strolling across the crater |
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| View North from the summit |
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| Nicole descending from the summit |
We had long ago blown through our "social" turnaround time, but still had plenty of time to get out before dark. We downclimbed to the ditched skis where Nicole began her glissading, and I quickly caught up on skis. Traveling quickly down to the large flat lava outcroppings, we were pleased to have pushed through and gotten the summit. We navigated our tracks back through the woods and down to the car- only 3 hour descent! We even had time to pick up some pizza on the way through Bend before getting to our B&B in time to share a beer with the owner. Best. Vacation. Ever.
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| Beautiful view of the crater and clouds below us from the summit |
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