South Sister and Memorial Day Weekend

For the past two years, it's been a tradition for me to visit friends in Houston for Memorial Day. This year, I wasn't able to make the trip. So the week before Memorial Day, when I realized I had Monday off, I started scrambling to figure out how to make use of the long weekend. I decided to cram as much in as possible. An offer to climb South Sister, the tallest of a group of three volcanoes in central Oregon, on Sunday came up part way through the week. I tentatively accepted, knowing that the forecast was calling for generally poor weather, including up to a foot of new snow and steady 20-30 mph winds.

Saturday, I joined a few friends around noon to cheer on Bayern München in the Champions League final. The day started out well with a victory for Die Roten. During that game, one of  my friends invited me to a pickup indoor soccer game at 6:30 that evening. Not one to turn down an invite to soccer, I gladly accepted, still debating whether I'd be climbing the next day, or not.

Because of the pain and swelling from the toe I broke a couple months ago, I'd been unable to wear my right rock climbing shoe until about a week ago. After the Bayern game, I met my rock climbing partner, Dante, at our gym and sent a few routes that I had previously been unable to climb. Being able to wear both climbing shoes and use my right foot more has improved my climbing.

After climbing at the gym, I came home to begin checking the weather for the potential climb on Sunday. It was still a poor forecast, but didn't sound like anything that would make summiting impossible. Still unsure of whether I was going to attempt the climb, I loaded the route coordinates into my GPS just in case.

The pickup soccer game at 6:30 was a lot of fun, and good exercise (to help toward the Tough Mudder I'm signed up for in June). It wasn't until I was on my way home from the soccer game that I finally decided I was definitely going to attempt the climb. I'd been playing the quote,

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do."

in my head most of the day (which is why I say "yes" to just about anything) and decided to let it guide me once more. After a quick shower and very fast packing, I threw all my gear into the back of my Jeep and by 9 pm was on the road, heading South.

A 5 Hour Energy and a Tom Clancy audio book kept me awake and alert for the four hours of driving, mostly through rain and over the lower mountain passes. I reached the parking lot of the Devil's Lake Trailhead by 1:30 am.

I unfolded my sleeping pad and laid out my sleeping bag in the back of my Jeep (with the back seats folded down, the back of the Jeep is exactly 6 feet diagonally). The 5:30 alarm came too soon, but I was excited for the climb as I began to cook breakfast while still in my sleeping bag. Just after 6 am, my climbing partner, Gabe (you might remember him as my climbing partner for summiting Mt. Hood) pulled up behind me. A light, but steady rain had fallen all night and continued through the morning.

We got a slightly later start than we had planned, but by 6:40 am, we were at the trailhead (5,500 ft elev). We hiked at a brisk pace through the lower, dense forest, following the sometimes faint footprints along what we assumed was the climbers' trail. After about 40 minutes, we'd climbed to 6,000 feet, where the rain turned to a wet snow.

Despite the less-than-ideal weather, we considered ourselves lucky that it wasn't sunny. The overcast skies protected the snow from the sun, keeping it firm. With the exception of a few knee deep postholes, our boots rarely sank more than a few inches into the fresh snow, so the hiking was relatively easy.

An hour-and-a-half and 2.5 miles after our start, we'd reached the first major waypoint of our climb, Moraine Lake. By this time, we were out of the forest and the forecast 20-30 mph winds manifested themselves. We bundled up as we stopped to get our bearings. Comparing our position to the track I'd downloaded to my GPS for the climb showed us on the wrong side of the lake. Gabe pulled out his map and confirmed that the climbers' trail was about a half mile west of us. The footprints and trail we'd been following was actually a hiking trail that veered off to Green Lakes, several miles east of South Sister. We resolved to check the map more frequently and follow the GPS route more carefully.

As we set off on the correct course, Gabe and I noticed that we were squinting, and opted to put on the sunglasses that we hadn't needed while hiking through the forest. We didn't wan't to get snow blindness, after all.

Over the next two hours, we battled the wind and steep terrain to gain another 1,400 feet over three miles. We had donned our snowshoes on the the steeper terrain to make the climbing easier. There was a persistent ridge to our right that we new we would have to gain. It didn't take long to spot a couple of weaknesses in the shear rock faces that made up the west side of the ridge. We chose one and scrambled up the even-steeper snow and through a rocky section at the eve of the ridge. For a brief time, the higher, west side of the ridge shielded us from the wind. But despite the steepening terrain, we moved quickly and were soon away from the protection of the ridge and back in the relentless wind.

After another hour and crossing a snow covered scree field, we reached 9,000 feet and the saddle at the bottom of the summit ridge. The wind and snow picked up as we gained the unprotected ridge. We were in near white out conditions. Luckily, I brought goggles and the switch from sunglasses made the difference between night and day, allowing me to see clearly and protecting my face from the brutal wind. I felt bad for Gabe, who had only sunglasses, which by now were fogging and freezing badly, making it difficult for him to see.

When we gained the ridge, our path converged with a couple of other climbers on AT gear (backcountry/uphill ski equipment). We remained just behind them for the rest of the climb to the crater and their presence gave us a good visual reference for the trail ahead.


At around 12:30, we reached a steepening, wind blown scree slope on the summit ridge that marked the last push before reaching the crater. Gabe and I removed our snow shoes and began the steep climb to the caldera. On our way up, we passed two other pairs of climbers on the way down from the summit. Some had chosen to wear crampons, but the snow was still soft and stable enough to allow our boots good purchase in the slope.

Just after 1:00 pm, we reached 10,190 feet and the caldera rim. Now, it was only a short walk across a frozen lake (the highest lake in Oregon) to reach the true summit. But the winds in the caldera were even more intense, I'd estimate around 40 mph or more. I hadn't eaten or drank much in the last couple of hours, not wanting to stop for any amount of time in the brutal wind. I decided we needed to find a sheltered spot to stop and refuel. It was challenging, but we found a small ledge behind a few rocks on the caldera ridge that blocked most of the wind. We hunkered down and ate sandwiches, drank water, and each added a layer of insulation to help warm us before the final push to the summit and the descent.

While we were stopped, Gabe's hands and toes began to go numb with the onset of frostnip. For several frantic minutes, he struggled to warm his extremities. The chemical hand warmers he opened were taking too long to warm up and he had to put each hand under his coat, in his armpits to warm them. We considered ending the climb and descending. The summit of South Sister isn't worth an injury.

When feeling returned to Gabe's hands, we decided to see if moving would help warm him up. We moved in the direction of the summit. The wind an snow were so bad that Gabe couldn't see anything out of his sunglasses. I navigated with my GPS, searching almost hopelessly for the summit. The visibility was so poor that after leaving our sheltered spot, despite being a mere 500 horizontal feet (and only 20 or so vertical feet) from the summit, we had no idea we were so close.

I barely realized we'd found the summit until I was practically touching it. When I stood on top of the small, craggy peak, I realized where all our problems had stemmed from. We were literally climbing in the clouds. With my feet on the summit, my head was above the tops of the clouds and I could see blue sky and the tops of white, fluffy clouds for miles in every direction. A small, single engine plane just 1,000 feet above banked and turned away from the summit. I waved.

After just over seven hours, 6.2 miles, and 5,000 vertical feet, we reached the 10,358 foot high summit.

Despite the inspiring view, I spent less time on this summit than any other mountain I've climbed. I stayed only for the 60 seconds it took to snap a picture of Gabe's signature summit pose. It took all that time to get my phone to take a picture. Despite not being able to see the screen and having my bare hand numb from the cold, I think the picture turned out quite well.


With zero visibility and our previous tracks completely covered by the blowing snow, we trudged back across the caldera nearly blind, barely able to read the GPS screen to keep us on course.

After reaching the south rim of the caldera, the rest of the descent was fairly straight forward. Having learned from our mistake descending Mt. Hood, we checked the GPS frequently to ensure we stayed on course. On our way down, we discovered that our navigational error around Moraine Lake had made our climb a bit longer and more difficult. We discovered that the climbers who had been ahead of us ascended the proper climbers' trail, which climbed much gentler slopes than we had. Ascending straight up from our detour, we bypassed one of the trail waypoints, missing the other climbers' footprints and the climbers' trail by a mere 30 or 40 yards. Another valuable lesson in poor weather navigation.

After over 11 hours and 13 miles, we made it back to the trailhead just before 6 pm. I wasn't looking forward to the four hour drive home. But I needed to be back in Portland that night for an Ultimate Fitness Class the next morning (more Tough Mudder training).

Not ten minutes after leaving the trailhead, on my way into Bend, the ground was dry and the sky was clear. After stopping for food in Bend, I had to drive back across the mountains to get back to the West side of the range. I got a clear view of the weather phenomenon that Gabe and I had climbed in. This picture shows North Sister, veiled in a thin cloud layer, the mountain range trapping all the weather to the west.


The next day, I realized just how thin that cloud layer was. I woke up with the second worst sunburn of my life (the worst also happened in the mountains, while spring skiing). I regretted my decision to not wear sunscreen as the thin layer of clouds offered little protection against the UV rays that beat on my skin for 11 hours. Another lesson learned.

Here's a link to my trip log that shows the track and elevation profile of the climb.

Standing on Top of Oregon

I realized a year long goal last Sunday, though it didn't come easily. It was my third time attempting to climb Mt. Hood (you may recall the first). Over the past year, I've probably planned half-a-dozen attempts on Hood that were either weathered out or that I became sick before.

With a stretch of good weather in the forecast, one of my climbing friends, Gabe, proposed at the beginning of the week that we make a winter attempt on Hood (we'd planted the seed with each other a couple of weeks earlier at the Santiam Alpine Club's annual banquet). Despite my broken toe, I was eager to make the attempt, given what appeared would be perfect weather. It's hard to get such great weather windows in the winter in the PNW.

As the week rolled on, the good weather in the city belied what was happening on the mountain. In the 48 hours preceding Friday morning, two feet of snow had been reported. With the great weekend weather forecast and the decreasing avalanche danger, I knew that by Sunday, someone would have climbed Hood and broken the trail.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Gabe and I met in a Safeway parking lot around 2 am on Sunday morning. We drove together the rest of the way to the mountain, the clear sky and full moon silhouetting the prominent peak. We were excited by our plans for a sunrise summit on a clear day working out. 

Here's a map of the South Side Route, for reference.

Timberline Lodge, our starting point (just off the bottom of the picture) sits at an elevation of 5,960 ft.

The new snow showed itself from the start, requiring us to don our snowshoes from the moment we left the climbers' parking lot at 3.30 am, headlamps illuminating our path. We were both familiar with the long slog up Palmer snowfield (roughly the yellow ski area in the above picture) and the recently packed snowcat track made the trek somewhat easier. We reached the top of the Palmer snowfield by 5.45 am. Shortly after, the snow changed drastically to wind-blown ice. We swapped our snowshoes for crampons and continued our climb. At about the same time, the winds picked up and we were climbing through the clouds in blowing snow. Visibility was terrible, not more than 30 feet or so, and we couldn't tell the difference between ground and air. What happened to our forecast of clear skies? 

The low visibility and challenging surface conditions made route finding more difficult and slowed our progress. Around 8.30 am, we reached 10,200 ft, just below and east of Crater Rock. While pausing for a brief rest and to get our bearings, a group of three climbers were descending toward us. We asked if they'd summited. They hadn't. They'd turned around after talking to another group higher up the mountain that had  turned around after running into thigh deep powder. Looking around for a few minutes, we noticed that every climber ahead of us was turning around and heading back down the mountain, deep snow and white-out visibility to blame. I counted nine turning around. Gabe and I were certain we wouldn't make the summit and nearly turned around ourselves. But, we decided to press on and see what the conditions were like first hand.

After climbing another 150 vertical feet, to just east of Crater Rock, we discovered exactly why all the other climbers had turned around. My assumption that with the great weather, other climbers would have summited before us, turned out to be wrong. No one had climbed the mountain since the last snowfall. There were two climbers just ahead of us also assessing the snow and the climbing route.

Andrew was a beginning (but strong) climber on his first attempt of Mt. Hood. Lon was a veteran of the South Side route on Hood, having climbed it dozens of times. The four of us teamed up to tackle the challenging snow and weather conditions in a concerted push for the summit. Lon's experience on the route proved invaluable as we couldn't see more than thirty feet in any direction and it was impossible to see the difference between snow and cloud.

Our upward progress was excruciatingly slow as Andrew, Lon, and I took turns breaking the trail through two feet of powder. Gabe had been fighting a cold all week, but is a strong climber and was able to keep up with the group. It took two hours to work our way up the 40° slope to the summit ridge, a gain of 800 vertical feet. We ascended one of the Old Chutes, the left most route to the summit ridge in the photo above.



I broke the trail for the last 70 or so vertical feet, up the chute, and upon topping out on the summit ridge, was greeted by a knife edge cornice with a front row view down the 2,500 foot drop of the north side headwall.







Most of the hard work had been finished, but the scariest section of the climb was the next thirty feet. It is often described as a highly exposed, two-foot wide catwalk with a 2,500 foot drop to the left, and a 150 foot drop to the right (though if you fell, you'd tumble nearly 1,000 feet down the steep snow into a fumarole). Though in reality (at least at the time we climbed), the path through the gnarled ice was barely wider than a large mountaineering boot in many sections. Half way across the catwalk, the narrow footing caused one of the points of my crampons to catch on my gaiters, sending me tumbling forward. Only a solid, steady ice axe placement separated me from the fumaroles. If the adrenaline wasn't flowing yet, it certainly was now.

After we safely crossed the catwalk, it was a short, easy walk to the summit. And in a turn of luck for the day, the clouds broke long enough to give us a much deserved, beautiful view from the summit. After almost a year (mostly the last seven hours) and 5,400 vertical feet over 3.6 miles, we'd reached the summit of Mt. Hood.


Lon, Gabe, and I (left to right) on the summit.

The hardest part may have been over, but we still had to descend. Crossing back over the catwalk was no more entertaining the second time around and descending the steep Old Chute and snowfield may be more challenging than climbing up it. Facing away from the slope, it's more difficult to get a solid ice axe placement and the downward momentum of each step tends to make you slide down the slope, which is exactly what you're trying to avoid. Nonetheless, we made it back to the Devil's Kitchen (just east of Crater Rock) and off of the technical portion of the mountain without incident.

Andrew snapped this picture of Gabe and I on our descent, just after exiting the Old Chutes.


We rested for a few minutes at the Devil's Kitchen, but the clouds settled in again, so we began our descent in zero visibility. This is a challenge on Mt. Hood, because if you follow the natural fall line, it leads you away from Timberline Lodge, to the cliffs of Mississippi Head. Even being aware of this common mistake, we headed down the fall line for several minutes before referencing our GPS and realizing we'd traveled quite a ways off course. After that, being prudent with our navigation, the descent was simply a matter of putting one tired foot in front of the other. Unfortunately, snow conditions didn't permit glissading.

Finally, 12 hours after leaving the parking lot, we made it back to our car. By some standards, in some conditions, Hood's south side route is an easy one, but Gabe and I earned our summit the hard way. It was by far the most physically, mentally, and technically challenging climb I've completed to date. 

Christmas in Colorado

Colorado was having another bleak snow year until just a couple of weeks before we were scheduled to go up to the cabin. Some time in late November/early December, it was 70° up in the mountains. Luckily, shortly  after, it started snowing consistently until right before we got there. Not much of Loveland was open when we first started riding, but by the end of our trip, a lot of new terrain had opened.

Trey and I arrived late Friday night, planning on getting a couple of days of riding in before the rest of our family arrived Sunday afternoon. We had planned on meeting at the Denver airport when both our flights arrived at midnight, picking up the rental car, then driving to the cabin. This plan had worked pretty well for us for our 4th of July trip, but this time, it backfired pretty badly. My flight out of Portland was delayed by three hours. Luckily, the car rental company let Trey pick up our car (which was in my name), but he still had to wait nearly four hours for me to arrive.

By the time my flight landed, I got my snowboard from the checked baggage, and we were leaving the airport, it was after 3 am. We decided not to stop for groceries, which was our original plan, and head straight for the cabin.

Arriving at the cabin near 4.30am, we had decided to forgo turning on the water and just get the heat running so we could go to bed faster. Unfortunately, the world had other plans for us. We opened the cabin door to find packrat poop everywhere. Literally. Everywhere. There was poop on every surface imaginable  from beds, to tables, to the back of the couch and every chair. The rats had chewed the wax from a candle on the table and the mats in the bottom of the sink. The vacuum crapped out on our last trip to the cabin, so we were left with using a tiny, half-broken dirt devil to suck up the frozen turds.

Luckily, because the doors had been closed to two of the rooms, their beds had been spared from the wrath of the rats. It was after 6 am before Trey and I got to crawl into those beds, me sleeping in full clothes on a frozen, rock hard foam mattress that didn't warm up until about 10 am.

Despite the setbacks, we woke up the next morning to a warm cabin, got the water running, and made it to the ski area around noon for a solid four hours of riding.

After the long night and first day of riding, Trey and I had one more mission to accomplish before the rest of the family arrived. We had to find the perfect Christmas tree. Just before dark, we set off up the mountain, ladder and saw in hand. We scouted several trees, but it seemed that every one was too thin to make a decent Christmas tree. Until we spotted the perfect one. We set the ladder up and were able to cut just the top seven feet of the tree, leaving the rest to grow, and giving us the best Christmas tree we'd ever found.



The snowy weather trend continued for the week that we were there and though not much terrain was open, we couldn't have gotten luckier with the conditions. We didn't take many pictures this trip, but I did get a lot of footage on my GoPro. I'm working on editing the video now and I'll post it as soon as it's finished.



Update 3/23/2012:
I finally finished the video. It took a couple months of editing, but I think it's one of the best results I've gotten . It's the first video I did full post production on, including editing, color correction, and motion graphic titles

Christmas In Colorado 2012 from Nathan Fletcher on Vimeo.

Flying in Oregon

It's been a little while since my last post and that is consistent with the amount of adventures I had over that period. After the rain started in October, it's been much more difficult to motivate myself to get outside.

Contrary to how it should be, I've use the poor weather as an opportunity to get back into flying. I found a small airport just outside of Portland and contacted a flight instructor there. I needed to get checked out in a rental plane so that I could fly on my own out here. It's taken three flights over the course of three months to accomplish that, mostly because of weather. We've planned to fly at least half-a-dozen times and been rejected by the weather. At least twice, my instructor and I showed up at the airport expecting to fly, only to find that the depression that the airport sits in is socked in by fog or a low cloud layer.

Just yesterday, we had the first clear weekend day that I've been in town for in the past couple of months. We took advantage of the opportunity and had a nice leisurely flight in the area so that Mike could show me the landmarks (on our previous flights, we'd been dodging low clouds at only about 1,500' AGL, so I couldn't get a sense of the area). The sky was incredibly clear and from our vantage point at 4,500', we could see out to the coast to the west and all of the nearby volcanoes to the east, some a couple hundred miles away.

One of the reasons it took three flights to get checked out was because of the unusual traffic pattern at our local airport. It's a small airport, with a short, 2,400 ft sloped runway. Normal procedure at Twin Oaks Airpark is to take off downhill on runway 20 and land uphill on runway 02 (different ends of the same runway, for those not familiar with runway nomenclature). As you can imagine, this can create some very interesting situations. It apparently doesn't happen too often, but on my first flight there, as I was on short final for 02, my instructor noticed a plane beginning its takeoff roll on 20, heading straight for us. We immediately pushed the power in and went around, narrowly escaping what would have been a certain collision.

The departing  plane had not been making radio calls, and even after our go around, was completely oblivious to our presence. Needless to say, I'm much more vigilant of other traffic now.

Avy 1 Course

For several years, I've been interested in backcountry snowboarding. The risk of avalanches has kept me in bounds until I could take a proper avalanche certification course. That was high on my list of things to do this winter and at the beginning of last October, I signed up for a course on Mt. Hood in January.

The course consisted of two evening classroom sessions and a weekend on Mt. Hood. During the classroom sessions, we learned about what causes avalanches, how to travel in avalanche terrain, and how to determine where avalanches live.

In the field sessions, we learned and practiced locating avalanche victims with beacons, probing for them with poles, then digging them out of the snow. We also did a mock backcountry tour on Mt. Hood, skinning around on the hillside assessing for avalanche danger, digging snow pits, and analyzing the snow pack.

I learned a lot and had a lot of fun, but more importantly I am now a safer and more aware backcountry traveler. Avalanches don't just affect skiers and snowboarders, they are a big part of mountaineering, too.

I only ended up with one picture from the course.