SAC Luau

Over Labor Day weekend, the Santiam Alpine Club (SAC) holds its annual luau. The luau is a always in a secret backcountry location with access to climbing. This year, the Luau was in the Three Sisters Wilderness,  a gorgeous area in central Oregon with four volcanoes. I hiked in to the secret location with a couple of other  SAC members and our adventure started earlier than we'd expected it to. Because the location is kept secret and meant to be secluded, it has a history of being hard to find. Maps and GPS coordinates are given only to SAC members attending the Luau, only a few days before the weekend.

Our camp was about a half mile off of the nearest trail, but where to leave the trail wasn't clear. Fritz, Sue, and I thought we'd found the right spot, but it turns out we left the trail a little too early, putting a series of cliff bands between us and camp. Since we are a climbing club, of course we decided to go up them, rather than around them. It took a bit longer than we'd expected, but we reached camp around dinner time Saturday evening (after leaving Portland Saturday morning). It was the sound of the donkeys that finally led us in the right direction.

Donkeys? One of the great and unique things about the club's luau is that a couple of the members own donkeys. Each year for the luau, they load a few donkeys with gear and food for the weekend so that we can live and eat luxuriously in the backcountry. Here are two of the donkeys crossing a creek on our way out  of the wilderness.


Our camp meals were comparable to the meals you receive on a guided raft trip. Here's Byron, one of the club's leaders, cooking burgers Saturday evening.


Our camp was just off the ridge line of one of the mountains, Broken Top, which we climbed Sunday. Because we camped only a couple of hours from the summit, we got to sleep in, eat a good breakfast and have a nice, leisurely start to our climb. Here's a picture of Broken Top from our hike in. You can see the Northwest ridge (to the right of the summit), which was our ascent route.


Broken Top was the first technical peak I've summited, having class 5 rock (vertical sections) with high exposure (it's a long was down, if you fall). We protected the really exposed portions with rope. It was a great experience and a ton of fun. Here's a panorama that has the summit of Broken Top on the right and several other volcanoes in the background. From left to right are the Three Sisters (South, Middle, North), Mt. Washington, Three Fingered Jack, and Mt. Jefferson. You'll here more about those mountains as I climb them.

There are a couple of people from my climbing group on the summit and you can see there is quite a drop from anywhere on the summit block.

The views form the summit were awesome. Check out my flickr stream for the rest of the pictures from the luau.