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/


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