Hiking Up the South Sister

Last week’s weather report for this past weekend (October 23-24) predicted snow in the mountains, so Thursday, October 21, was my last opportunity this year to hike up the South Sister (also known as Charity). At 10,363 feet, the South Sister is the third highest mountain in Oregon and the highest you can hike without any climbing skills. Still, the trail is very steep–5 of the 6 miles averaged 20 percent grades.

I started at Devils Lake, which is about 5,500 feet, so I “only” had to climb about 5,000 feet. The trail began with 1-1/2 miles of steep uphill through dense forest. On emerging from the forest, I had an excellent view of Broken Top, a 9,175-foot mountain east of the South Sister. As the photo shows, morning skies were clear. (Click any photo for a larger view.)

The next mile or so was fairly flat and overlooked a lake called Moraine Lake. Ominously, clouds began to move in shortly before noon.

Soon after that I had an excellent view of the South Sister. Then the trail turned steep again. After reaching timberline, the ground was mostly rocks and sand-sized particles, making it hard to walk.

After a steep climb, I reached Lewis Glacier, which has carved a chunk out of the southeast side of the mountain.

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The trail then followed the west edge of the rim above the glacier. This part of the trail was particularly slow going, partly because of less oxygen above 9,000 feet. During parts of this climb, the entire peak was obscured in fast-moving clouds.

At the top, the volcano’s crater is filled with ice. I quickly donned warmer gear and ate lunch while hoping the clouds would blow away.

When the clouds mostly disappeared, I followed a trail skirting around the ice field to the north end of the rim, which is the actual summit of the mountain. My photo of the summit shows Broken Top in the background.

From the summit I took a photo of the North and Middle Sisters (aka Faith and Hope), with Mt. Jefferson, Three-Finger Jack, and Black Butte in the background. Just to the left of Black Butte is a plume of smoke from a prescribed fire that smoked up the Metolius Basin (where I live) last week.

After spending about an hour on top, I headed down. The right side of the photo shows most of my route: right of the glacier, then down the flatter area to the right and above Moraine Lake, then through the V between two hills — the steep hill on the left is Devils Hill, the one on the right is Kaleetan Butte. To the left of Devils Hill is Sparks Lake and, in the background, Mt. Bachelor (9,068 feet). Within 24 hours or so, everything above 5,000 feet, including most of the trail I hiked on, would be covered in snow.

The entire hike took 8-1/2 hours, not quite as fast as I had hoped. Going up was merely hard, while coming down was painful, at least to these 58-year-old joints. I learned that being in shape to cycle around Crater Lake three times in one day does not mean you also in shape to hike up a 10,000-foot mountain; my muscles were sore for days after the hike.