The South Sister

We hiked the south sister yesterday and it was tough. The mountain is the third highest peak in Oregon and the trail has over 5,000' of vertical rise. The average incline is at least 15 to 20 degrees at all times. That's the average though over the entire 6 mile (and some change) trail. There is about 2 miles where it's fairly flat so that average doesn't quite paint the picture on how difficult the hike is. There were at least three distinct sections where I could put my hands out and touch the ground without leaning down to do so. The trail there was more like a ladder, only without steps. Instead it had loose volcanic rock that for every step you took, say 2', you'd slide back down for 1.5' of that step. It was "turbo" hard as my friend Chris would say.

We started hiking late Friday afternoon and camped a three quarters of the way from the summit. We sat around that night, enjoying the weather and scenary and went to bed when the sun went down. We woke up at two am to reach the summit for sunrise. It was awesome. Those pictures are on the camera still so I'll post again when I get those loaded.

Location:Bend,OR