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Had a friend come down from Bellingham for the weekend. We trucked out to the Pole Creek trailhead in search of adventure. A small blanket of snow at the trailhead, however, we still packed our skis on our backs for 3-4 miles and up to 6000 ft where we finally encoutered a climbers skin track through forest.
The track lead to the base of Hayden Glacier between North and Middle Sister where we set up camp amongst the great volcanoes of Central Oregon.
Awoke early the next morning (4:30am) to blustery winds and concern about gusts up on the mountain. We secured the tents and moved upward in the moonlight. No headlamps necessary. When we reached the col between North & Middle sister we were greeted with a daunting west face of North Sister. We debated the line for some time and then picked what looked reasonable. We spent the next several hours precariously ascending North Sister. I felt outside of my comfort zone on several occassions but not by much and continued to push onward through the infamous “Terrible Traverse”. We reached the bottom of the summit block only to find the final pitch was WAY WAY WAY outside of our skill-set & comfort level. We turned and started the terrifying descent involving steep death chutes, crazy traverses, and ~ 1000ft of downclimb to the Collier Glacier.
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