Guy's Weekend 2007 - Saturday

On Saturday, most of the guys slept in 'til around 8:00, and then we started prepping for the climb. From what I had heard and read, South Sister would be a strenuous, uphill climb, but wouldn't contain anything really technical or dangerous. This was the primary reason I selected this mountain to summit. Here we are getting ready to head out (thanks to the self-timer on the camera).

Unfortunately, we ended up taking a very difficult route up about half the mountain, and as a result we had to climb up some very steep rock cliffs for awhile. We learned first hand the old climbing adage that "It all comes down to the route." We dodged falling boulders that were kicked loose from other climbers, and definitely had a taste of real adventure. I think the difficult route we took was the result of a trail that had been covered with snow. Since the glacier covered our trail, we had to "improvise," and that made things much more dicey.

Here is Jesse fertilizing some of the greenery:

Here is a picture taken on our way up:

Here is Craig attempting to navigate the more technical portion of the climb:

If you look very, very carefully in this picture, you can see a white speck in the middle of the picture. This is where Jesse and Sean had climbed ahead. This picture gives a pretty good sense of the type of terrain we faced:

However, after a lot of climbing we all made it to the top. It felt great to accomplish the feat and the view from the top was amazing.



The picture above shows Middle and North Sister from the top.


Here is a short video(no sound) taken from the top. When I zoom in on the lake near the end of the video, I was just trying to focus on where our campsite was.



On the way down, we covered several thousand feet of elevation in just a few minutes as we "glissaded" down a huge glacier. Basically this means that we either attempted to "ski" on our shoes down or some of the guys just sat down and slid right to the bottom (no pun intended). It was tons of fun and an experience I won't soon forget. Sometimes I think as we grow older we tend to get more serious, so "kid-like" experiences like sliding down a steep, snow-covered hill can be really good for us.






Here is a video (no sound) of Jeff and Brian slip-sliding their way down, and after that I have posted a very choppy video that I shot while I was sliding down. You can see my shadow reflected on the snow as I attempt to hold the camera and keep my balance. It's a wonder that my camera made it back from this trip.





We finally got back to camp around 7:30, meaning that we were hiking/climbing for around 9-1/2 hours, but of course we stopped fairly frequently along the way (especially once we were above 10,000 feet). Brian and I cooked up some chicken fajitas for the hungry hikers and we enjoyed some hot chocolate and great conversation to finish off the day.