South Sister Summit

This past weekend Janel and I climbed South Sister with Allen, Steve, and Chrissy. South Sister is the largest of the "Three Sisters" at ~10,300 feet and is the third tallest mountain in Oregon (behind Hood and Jefferson). It is a 4800 foot ascent (think 3+ sears towers) to the top of the dormant volcano in ~5 miles. It was a quite steep hike -- particularly at the end. In the middle there is ~1.5 miles or so of flat trail ... so the majority of the climb is packed into a pretty short distance.


We drove down to Bend, OR on Friday afternoon and crashed at the Entrada Hotel on the outskirts of town. We got to bed early and woke up @ 5AM and drove ~30 minutes to the trail head. We hit the trail at ~6am (just before sunrise).


After climbing up about 1200 feet in the trees, we got above the tree line into a Moraine (lots of coarse sand caused by glaciers). Here is a picture of the nearby Broken Top mountain with the sun rising next to it.





The trail climbs at the start for ~1.5 miles, then is flat for a good while. It then starts to climb (not too steep) and the views continue to get better as you climb. Eventually you get to a point where the rocks turn form grey to a volcanic red. This is a great viewpoint. If you are looking for a nice hike -- I would highly recommend hiking to this point. It is a bit easier than climbing to the top and still has some great views to the South.


We finally hit the summit @ ~10:00. We ended up spending >2.5 hours on top just wandering and laying around ... taking in the views. The summit is actually a caldera that is filled in with a glacier. You arrive at the southern side of the rim. If you ever do this hike ... don't wimp out. Make the easy walk around to the true summit on the North-East side of the rim. The view North is one of the best I have ever seen ... and it is not hard at all to get to it.


Here is a picture of Janel, Steve, and I sitting ~5 feet north of the summit looking at Middle and North Sister.





Here is another picture with Middle and North Sister, with Mt. Hood just behind North Sister and Mt. Adam just to the left (kinda hard to see) of North Sister. You could also just make out Rainier. It was really cool to be able to see this string of dormant volcanos all lined up in a row along the fault line.





Here is a picture of Janel and I with the glacier inside the caldera behind us. The true summit is just above and to the right of Janel.





Here is a picture of the 5 of us (also looking into the caldera):





Remember that picture of Broken Top at sunrise? Here is a picture of that same mountain from the summit. A lot smaller eh? :)





After finishing hanging out at the top (and Steve finally discovering his camera that he "lost" in his pocket), we headed down the mountain. We took a good amount of time getting down, and finally got back to the car at about 4 (3.5 hours later). It is definitely possible to make the trip down faster than that if you are sure footed and not afraid to fall a few times :).


We all had a great time. The weather was perfect and the views were great. This was Janel's second major hike (the first being one that we took in Norway) and she is turning into quite the hiker :). I was very proud of her for giving this a shot.


You can see all the photos here. You can see a selection of the best photos (by Allen and I) here. You can see some stitched photos (taken by Allen) [url=http://www2.iansteiner.com/gallery2/v/2007/south_sister/stitched/


new=false]here[/url].


Note: as of now I am still uploading the photos ... so they may not be quite ready when you look for them :).

Renewable Power

So today I signed up to use wind power for my electricity. I am paying an extra $7 / month for 400KW Hours (the majority of our power bill). I encourage you all to take a look at your power company's webpage to see if you can do something similar to support clean renewable energy. Out here in Portland PGE has two options -- one where 100% of your power is from a variety of renewable energy sources and costs like $0.008 per KWh (a couple bucks per month). They have a second option where you can buy units ($3.50 / 200KWh unit) of Oregon Wind Power to help support the development of local renewable power sources. This is a relatively cheap thing you can do to help move our country towards clean renewable energy :).


You can read about the PGE plans here.


I took a quick look around the Com-Ed website (in Chicago) and was unable to find anything like this out there :(. Please post a comment if you find something similar in your neck of the woods :).

Wedding Photos

Janel and I got the digital proofs of all our wedding photos. So, if you wanted to buy a picture but did not want to pay the exorbitant prices that photographers charge, now is the time. You can see all the photos here.

Megan and Trevor Wedding

This past weekend Janel and I were back in Chicago for Megan and Trevor's wedding. We had a great time seeing our two good friends tie the knot.


This was my first time in a wedding party -- and our first wedding since getting married. It was a pretty cool wedding because we really had been good friends with both the groom and the bride for about 8 years rather than being friends with one and then later meeting the other.


You can see some select photos from the wedding here. Or you can see all the photos here.


Here is a picture of Janel and I at the wedding:





Here is a picture of me with the bride:

Nesmith Point

I climbed Nesmith Point in the gorge with Allen and his friend from grad school Caitlin (sp?). It was a good training hike for our upcoming summit attempt (of either Adams or South Sister). It is a 9.6 mile hike with ~3800 feet of elevation change.


There are a few decent views of Adams across the Colombia River as you get towards the top, but thats about it. It was a good hike -- but don't expect great views for the price you pay for the elevation change :).


Here is a picture from the point itself:

Crater Lake

Last weekend we took a camping trip down to Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon. Kevin drove down from Seattle, and Amy joined us along with some of her friends from school. We left bright and early on Saturday morning, and only had about half of the day on Saturday and half the day on Sunday to enjoy ourselves down there ... but we made the most of the beautiful weather.


You can see all of the photos here or some select photos from the trip here.


After driving the 4 or 5 hours down there, we started off by driving around the lake. We tried to get tickets for the boat tour, but they were all sold out for the day (except for some tickets on the trip that leaves you at Wizard Island which we were not interested in).


Here is a photo from the drive around the lake that shows Wizard Island - a cinder cone that is in the lake.





Here is a photo of the four of us.





After driving around the lake, we left the park and did a nice hike out to the Umpqua Hot Springs - some popular hot springs north of the park. When we arrived at the trail head, we discovered that the bridge across the river to the trail was out. So, our 1.2 mile quick hike quickly turned into a 4+ mile hike. This turned out to be a blessing, as nobody was at the hot springs when we got there. Kevin and I got in and enjoyed the water that is supposed to be 108 degrees, but Janel and Amy were not feeling it and did not join us.


After finishing up the hike, we headed back to camp to cook some brats over the fire and drink some beers. We got really lucky and got a site right on Diamond Lake. This campround had so-so reviews in one of my books -- but turned out to be quite nice. It is a very large campground, but there was plenty of space between the different sites and the people there seemed to be largely older folks. There was some noise because there seemed to be some gigantic Square Dance thing going on down the lake ... but no biggy :). Here is a photo from sunset on the lake.





Sunday we took the trail down to Crater Lake and then took the two hour boat tour around the lake. This was a bit pricey ... but was definitely worth it. Below is a picture of "Old Man of the Lake" next to Wizard Island. This is a log that has been bobbing vertically and moves all over the lake. The cool thing about it is that it has been around for over 100 years floating in the lake. They are not sure exactly what keeps it vertical, nor why it does not become waterlogged and sink.





Also on the tour we saw a baby bald eagle up in it's nest. The picture below shows the zoomed in picture of the eagle, and the one below it shows the location of the nest (as well as how amazingly blue the water is there).








We had a good time visiting Crater Lake ... but I probably won't be undertaking all that driving on a summer weekend again anytime soon. I hope to visit the lake again sometime this winter though. The lake gets over 480 inches (40 feet) of snow a year ... so it is not clear all that often down there. Since our winter weekends are a bit less packed ... I will probably wait until a weekend when the weather looks favorable, drive down, and camp in the snow. You are welcome to join me if you like :).