Middle Sister Climb

Total mileage: 18 miles (5 miles from Camp lake)
Elevation gain: 6K feet
Starting trailhead: Pole Creek trailhead
Route: SE Ridge via Camp Lake

This was somewhat impromptu decision. One of my friend ended up posting this on Facebook that it would be cool to summit the Middle Sister. We ended up chatting a bit on the topic and decide, let's go do it.

After researching about the climbing routes, two most obviously taken routes were on the table. North route, which goes along the Hayden Glacier to the saddle between North and Middle sister and Southeast (SE) ridge route - which starts from Camp Lake and follows the SE ridge up to the summit. Considering I don't have any glacier skills, we decided that we shall do the SE ridge route.

We stated from Pole Creek TH. Camp lake is about 7.5 miles from the trailhead. Trail doesn't get steep at any point and we had a leisurely hike in. We got to the camp in the afternoon, after setting up the camp and finishing the camp chores, it was time for dinner. We talked to few climbers that went up on the day and they said, the route was easy to follow, but there was lot of snow and postholing on the way.

Everyone got up at teh crack of dawn and started our hike upto the summit. After gaining the plataue above the lake, we followed a bootpath south. We soon realized that we have gone far too south and SE ridge was behind us. We decided to boulder straight upto gain the ridge. between Saturday and Sunday, considerable amount of snow had melted, so we weren't postholing too much, but shaded patches of snow were far too icy to walk on.

After we gained the SE ridge (Photo Credit: Sam Liao)

Summit Celebration (Photo Credit: Sam Liao)

North View from the summit


Full Screen.

Broken Top Circumnavigation

Start Point: Three Creek Lake TH

Hiking Stats: 25 miles, 4500 feet elevation gain

We started from Three creek Lake on Saturday for a 3-day Labor Day weekend circumnavigation of the Broken Top Mountain. There was still some lingering snow on the ground from the week before. For the first night, we camped on the shores of Golden Lake. Night time temperature dropped down to high 20s. For the second night, we made our way around the mountain, passing Green Lakes to the no-name lake in the crater just below the summit. There weren't many flat spots available here, but we were able to squeeze in 4 tents very close together. It was really windy in the evening, so in order to block the wind at night, we made a 2 feet wall around our tents. Morning was really calm and warm, watching the sun rise and alpenglow over Broken Top was really spectacular. After quick breakfast, we made our way out via Tam McArthur rim trail back to Three Creek Lake. I think the whole way out and the walk on the rim was really amazing with the views of Three Sisters.

South Sister Climb

This is a repeat of the adventure I did a year ago. I was leading different friends up the mountain and hoping for a better sunrise shot.

We started from Devil's lake around noon and it took us just more than an hour to get to Moraine Lake. This time we we went down to the lake to find a designated campsite only to find out that all the designated spots were taken. Finally we did find a spot next to the post.

On the way to Moraine Lake

It was such a hot day, so as soon as everybody was done setting up the camp, we went to the lakeshore and hung out there and had fun in water.

Dinner by the beach

Starting out

We started out at midnight from camp. the weather was perfect - not too cold or windy. We were making good progress, so every now and then we would stop for a minute and turn off our headlamps and stare at the stars in complete silence. Going uphill, we did loose the trail a couple of times, but with the help of gps, we were able to get back on track.

We got to the summit with plenty of time to spare before the sunrise. There were about 4 tents at the summit, but other than that we were the first group. We hunkered down in one of the smaller   windbreak waiting for the sun to come up.

Group shot on the summit looking north towards Middle and North Sister

We probably spent more than an hour on the summit exploring around. One the way back down, we ran into 100s of other hiker going up. It was 9am and it was already getting very hot. Getting the climb out of the way in the cooler weather was probably the best thing to do.

Express way down