Route Climbed: Southeast Ridge Date Climbed: October 14, 2001
The originally planned Chemeketan Club climb had been cancelled due to the possibility of poor weather. Having been locked up inside for a few weekends and the lack of technical difficulty that this route would afford, I was determined to climb whether anyone joined me or not. Luckily, three others decided to join me no matter the weather.
Due to scheduling conflicts we decided that we would not meet at the Pole Creek trailhead, but instead meet at Camp Lake where we would spend the night before summiting. Not being prepared to climb, I got a late start not leaving the trailhead until after two in the afternoon.
As I hiked alone up to Camp Lake, I made decent time covering the 6 miles and 1800' of elevation gain. By the time I had reached camp, by fellow climbers had already established camp and were filtering water from the lake. After getting water of my own, we each prepared our dinner for the night and settled into our tents early. After the sun had gone down, the temperature dropped rapidly due to the clear night sky.
Sometime during the night, the weather system that had been predicted moved in. By 0700, when my alarm went off, I was fired up and ready to go. The weather was brisk and definitely wet drizzle with a good amount of wind. Due to the low clouds, visibility was poor and we could hardly make out the climbers' trail that we had spotted the evening before.
As we gathered our packs, we set off up the initial scree field traversing around a nose. With the low visibility we could not see the entire route and we struggled to determine the correct ridge that would lead us to the top. All but one of us had never been up Middle Sister and no one had done this route. We continued making progress up the mountain, traversing around east of the rock band that Herb aptly named the "Loaf". Eventually we had moved far enough east that we were adjacent to the Dillar Glacier, and we knew that we had finally found the correct ridge. However, we had traversed too far and were moving up somewhat technical rock in wet conditions. We had our reservations on the "fun" that we would experience on the way down. After we topped out the rock band, climbing became much more easy and we continued to make our way up the ridge, eventually gaining the summit.
Weather on the summit was crappy, the wind was gusting in the thirties and the drizzle had soaked all of our gloves. My digital camera was not functioning well due to all of the moisture, so we only took a couple of shots. There wasn't much else to look at since it was all socked in, so our time was short on top.
Our descent down went unhampered for the first 1/2 hour and then the weather broke. This allowed great views of North and South Sister, as well as highlighting various descent routes that we could pick from. As we continued our trip down we analyzed our route that we had taken earlier that morning.
After a short time, and some shedding of clothes due to the warm weather, we made our way back to our camp. A short break, and breakdown of camp, we shouldered the heavy packs again and hiked the distance out.
Route Climbed: North Ridge via Collier Glacier Date Climbed: 9/23/01
Went in the day before from the Obsidian Trail approach thinking my buddy and I could summit both North and Middle Sisters but my friend's knee gave out on him in the Col so he retreated back to camp and I decided to solo Middle Sister. Took a wrong ridge approach from Collier Glacier and ended up on Prouty Point and had to do some 3rd class scrambling down to the ridge between Middle and North Sisters. From there it was just a ridge walk and a hike up a beach of a mountain.
Route Climbed: North Ridge via Hayden Glacier Date Climbed: August 3, 2000
On August 2, I met Joel, his brother Dan, and his nephew Zach in Sisters, Oregon for a trip to the top of Middle Sister. We were given a ride to the Pole Creek Trail Head by my friend Mike Partridge. The weather quite warm and the 4.5 mile hike into the camp site was quite dusty. We come upon three people on horses who were quite upset that we were so quiet and it spooked their horses. We set up camp near a glacial melt stream on a ridge looking up at both North and Middle Sisters. We spent a pleasant evening watching the stars before hitting the sack. We were in no hurry and set off for the summit at 9 a.m. on the 3rd. We had some walking over and around a couple of ridges of moraine or just cinders? before hitting the snow. Shorts and short sleeve shirts were the attire as the weather was quite comfortable. Once upon Hayden Glacier, we had an easy time of it. Didn't put on the crampons until well up on the glacier. There was a small ridge along the right side of the glacier that ran up to Prouty Point. There were a couple of small crevasses that were easily passable. At Prouty Point, we stopped to enjoy the view and have a bite to eat. We then proceeded across the glacier and up a short steep ridge to the left (south) edge of the saddle and the head of the glacier where it was time to remove the crampons and continue up through a mixture of scree, dirt, some scrambling, and one snow field. The scramble from the snow through scree to gain the ridge was steep with a lot of loose rock. BE CAREFUL! We stayed a little to the left and slightly below the main ridge. There were obvious climber trails through here. Near the summit Dan made an interesting find, a dead opossum. What was it doing at 10,000 ft up on a mountain? From the summit we could easily see the line of Cascade Volcanoes all the way to Mount Adams to the north and Mount McLoughlin to the south. We also were able get a good look at the Prouty Glacier on South Sister. This was the route we wanted to climb the next day. It turned out to be quite crevassed and since we did not have harnesses or ropes we decided to save it for another time. On Friday we broke camp and headed for Demaris Lake (about 0.5 mi up Camp Lake Trail & then 0.8 mi on the Demaris Lake Trail) for a refreshing swim. On the way out from Demaris lake we decided to try a small class 3 rock near the junction of the Demaris trail and Camp Lake trail. Reaching the top we found the Camp Lake trail wrapped around this rock and one can reach the top with an easy walk. The climb was much more fun. The walk out was quite leisurely and are looking forward to a return trip to climb South Sister.
Hammer - Oct 16, 2001 3:13 am
Route Climbed: Southeast Ridge Date Climbed: October 14, 2001The originally planned Chemeketan Club climb had been cancelled due to the possibility of poor weather. Having been locked up inside for a few weekends and the lack of technical difficulty that this route would afford, I was determined to climb whether anyone joined me or not. Luckily, three others decided to join me no matter the weather.
Due to scheduling conflicts we decided that we would not meet at the Pole Creek trailhead, but instead meet at Camp Lake where we would spend the night before summiting. Not being prepared to climb, I got a late start not leaving the trailhead until after two in the afternoon.
As I hiked alone up to Camp Lake, I made decent time covering the 6 miles and 1800' of elevation gain. By the time I had reached camp, by fellow climbers had already established camp and were filtering water from the lake. After getting water of my own, we each prepared our dinner for the night and settled into our tents early. After the sun had gone down, the temperature dropped rapidly due to the clear night sky.
Sometime during the night, the weather system that had been predicted moved in. By 0700, when my alarm went off, I was fired up and ready to go. The weather was brisk and definitely wet drizzle with a good amount of wind. Due to the low clouds, visibility was poor and we could hardly make out the climbers' trail that we had spotted the evening before.
As we gathered our packs, we set off up the initial scree field traversing around a nose. With the low visibility we could not see the entire route and we struggled to determine the correct ridge that would lead us to the top. All but one of us had never been up Middle Sister and no one had done this route. We continued making progress up the mountain, traversing around east of the rock band that Herb aptly named the "Loaf". Eventually we had moved far enough east that we were adjacent to the Dillar Glacier, and we knew that we had finally found the correct ridge. However, we had traversed too far and were moving up somewhat technical rock in wet conditions. We had our reservations on the "fun" that we would experience on the way down. After we topped out the rock band, climbing became much more easy and we continued to make our way up the ridge, eventually gaining the summit.
Weather on the summit was crappy, the wind was gusting in the thirties and the drizzle had soaked all of our gloves. My digital camera was not functioning well due to all of the moisture, so we only took a couple of shots. There wasn't much else to look at since it was all socked in, so our time was short on top.
Our descent down went unhampered for the first 1/2 hour and then the weather broke. This allowed great views of North and South Sister, as well as highlighting various descent routes that we could pick from. As we continued our trip down we analyzed our route that we had taken earlier that morning.
After a short time, and some shedding of clothes due to the warm weather, we made our way back to our camp. A short break, and breakdown of camp, we shouldered the heavy packs again and hiked the distance out.
Brian Jenkins - Sep 24, 2001 8:45 am
Route Climbed: North Ridge via Collier Glacier Date Climbed: 9/23/01Went in the day before from the Obsidian Trail approach thinking my buddy and I could summit both North and Middle Sisters but my friend's knee gave out on him in the Col so he retreated back to camp and I decided to solo Middle Sister. Took a wrong ridge approach from Collier Glacier and ended up on Prouty Point and had to do some 3rd class scrambling down to the ridge between Middle and North Sisters. From there it was just a ridge walk and a hike up a beach of a mountain.
keema - Jul 23, 2001 11:04 am
Route Climbed: North Ridge via Hayden Glacier Date Climbed: August 3, 2000On August 2, I met Joel, his brother Dan, and his nephew Zach in Sisters, Oregon for a trip to the top of Middle Sister. We were given a ride to the Pole Creek Trail Head by my friend Mike Partridge. The weather quite warm and the 4.5 mile hike into the camp site was quite dusty. We come upon three people on horses who were quite upset that we were so quiet and it spooked their horses. We set up camp near a glacial melt stream on a ridge looking up at both North and Middle Sisters. We spent a pleasant evening watching the stars before hitting the sack. We were in no hurry and set off for the summit at 9 a.m. on the 3rd. We had some walking over and around a couple of ridges of moraine or just cinders? before hitting the snow. Shorts and short sleeve shirts were the attire as the weather was quite comfortable. Once upon Hayden Glacier, we had an easy time of it. Didn't put on the crampons until well up on the glacier. There was a small ridge along the right side of the glacier that ran up to Prouty Point. There were a couple of small crevasses that were easily passable. At Prouty Point, we stopped to enjoy the view and have a bite to eat. We then proceeded across the glacier and up a short steep ridge to the left (south) edge of the saddle and the head of the glacier where it was time to remove the crampons and continue up through a mixture of scree, dirt, some scrambling, and one snow field. The scramble from the snow through scree to gain the ridge was steep with a lot of loose rock. BE CAREFUL! We stayed a little to the left and slightly below the main ridge. There were obvious climber trails through here. Near the summit Dan made an interesting find, a dead opossum. What was it doing at 10,000 ft up on a mountain? From the summit we could easily see the line of Cascade Volcanoes all the way to Mount Adams to the north and Mount McLoughlin to the south. We also were able get a good look at the Prouty Glacier on South Sister. This was the route we wanted to climb the next day. It turned out to be quite crevassed and since we did not have harnesses or ropes we decided to save it for another time. On Friday we broke camp and headed for Demaris Lake (about 0.5 mi up Camp Lake Trail & then 0.8 mi on the Demaris Lake Trail) for a refreshing swim. On the way out from Demaris lake we decided to try a small class 3 rock near the junction of the Demaris trail and Camp Lake trail. Reaching the top we found the Camp Lake trail wrapped around this rock and one can reach the top with an easy walk. The climb was much more fun. The walk out was quite leisurely and are looking forward to a return trip to climb South Sister.
