Middle Sister
Three
Sisters is over 3 hours drive from Portland,
so
I drove up on Monday and camped at Scott Lake,
with a six mile day
hike just to warm up my legs. I got up
before dawn, made coffee and ate breakfast before dawn, put my
car-camping gear
back in the car, loaded my new pack, then unloaded it and loaded it
again more
compactly, and arrived at the trailhead right at 7:30.
There I saw a rather dismaying message that
the entire Obsidian area, including the trail to the beginning of the
Collier
Glacier route I planned to take, requires a special permit that must be
obtained in advance from the main ranger station: the
note emphasized “both day use and
overnight use.” I debated a minute,
determined that “day use” does not include hiking through on the way to
a less
over-used area and, promising not to stop for a granola bar or take a
picture
or otherwise “use” the area on the way through, proceeded.
(It turns out that the Forest Service does
not intend to rule out through-hikers; they simply worded the sign very
poorly.)
The first
part of the hike – 5.1 miles to the beginning of the climber’s trail –
went
smoothly, and I completed it in a little over 1.5 hours.
I stopped to fill my canteens at Glacier
Creek, wasted a little time looking for the trail up over the rockfall
from
which the creek emerges, and then proceeded.
The trail was quite steep even at the beginning, which I
expected – it
was also rather rough. 
When I
crossed
the first ridge above the beginning of the climber’s trail and broke
out into
the valley leading up to Collier Glacier, I faced a strong and gusty
headwind,
which plagued me all the way to the summit.
At times it felt like the gusts were actually going to blow me
over, and
it also felt like the wind added 25 or 30 pounds to the effective
weight of my
pack. Another annoyance that I hadn’t
anticipated – the equinoctial sun was at almost exactly the same
elevation in
the sky as the slope of the mountain, and it was directly in my face. Even seeing the trail ahead of me was
difficult; taking pictures of the trail ahead impossible.
Other than
these two inconveniences, the hike up the valley to Collier glacier,
then on up
the glacier, was a lot of fun. I decided
to climb the moraine next to the glacier and deferred putting on my
crampons
and walking up the snow, a decision I regretted. The
adjustable crampons work like a charm,
and once I was on the glacier I found walking on the snow much easier
than
stumbling over watermelon-sized rocks and slip-sliding through loose
gravel and
fine sand on the moraine.
At about
1000 feet below the summit, however, I had no choice.
I came to the end of the glacier and ran out
of snow – just when the slope grew steeper.
The ground was no firmer – my impression is that Middle Sister
is just a
huge pile of rocks and sand; even the top is just a huge boulder, about
the
size of a large refrigerator, undistinguished in any way except that it
is a
bit higher than the surrounding boulders. 
The route turns southward at the top of Collier Glacier, and
obligingly,
the sun also wheeled on around, so it was still directly in my face as
I peered
upward at the trail ahead. After an hour
or so of sand-pile walking (two feet up for every foot of actual
elevation
gain) I reached the top at about 1:15 and sat down for a sandwich and a
bit of
scenery. I had begun with the idea that,
if things went well, I might give the north route up South sister a try
that
same afternoon, but reaching the top that late was not “going well,” so
I gave
up on that plan.
I took a
few pictures but it was a very hazy day – a forest fire had started
down near
Oakridge, adding to the thick pall of smog from the Willamette Valley,
and the pictures I did take of the other Cascade peaks were pretty
unexciting. But my eye is better at
filtering out haze than my camera, and the view was spectacular. Particularly spectacular was the view of
North Sister, which I don’t think I will ever climb, and South Sister,
which I
was thinking of climbing the next day.
North Sister is accessed by a ridge that looks, close-up, to be
much
worse than the ridge I had just scrambled up, and it is topped by a
pair of
spectacular spires, both over 200 feet high.
Turning my eye southward, I rehearsed what I had read about the
north
route up South Sister and traced where it must go.
It looked very steep, even from three miles
away.
The way
down, along the ridge that stretches out to the south and east, looked
a lot
like what I had just scrambled up.
It
is
blocked by a large rock outcropping, but otherwise looked fairly easy
to get
down. The wind, which had plagued me the
entire day, died as a started down the ridge.
When I reached the outcropping, I followed what appeared to be
the
trail, missed where it turned back up toward the ridge, and ended up
following
a secondary descent that drops pretty well straight down the fall line. That way appears to be considerably steeper;
much of it is over unstable heaps of rock that require constant testing
and
unrelenting caution. Once I realized I
had taken the wrong trail, I considered scrambling back up the ridge
trail –
and later wished I had, since the direct descent was misery the entire
way. The descent took at least half
again as long as the ridge trail would have taken, and I didn’t reach
the level
of the saddle between the two peaks until nearly 3:30.
I hiked on down to Camp Lake, about 500 feet
below the saddle, found a level stretch for my sleeping pad, and sat
down to
take my boots off and enjoy a snack of some salty peanuts.
With no tent and no campfires allowed, even
if I were inclined to have one, setting up camp is a pretty minimal
exercise –
a good thing, because I had pretty minimal energy.
As I gazed
at South Sister, tracing what appeared to be the best route up, and
discussing
it with another hiker who was camped at the lake (planning to climb
Middle
Sister the next day) I decided that it
looked doable, and I should at least give a try. So
I decided I would get up early the next
morning, forego the opportunity for a second leisurely pot of coffee,
and give
it a go.
North
Route South Sister