Climbing South Sister

At 10,358 feet South Sister towers above every peak in the surrounding area. The third largest peak in Oregon commands your attention and just about every once of energy to climb it.
We decided to backpack into the green lakes area on Friday Aug 28 and make that our base camp for an ascent a fresh Saturday morning . This is not the traditional route up south sister that most people take.
We began our hike around 9:30am, a late start in my opinion, due to confusion of what trail to take. You want to make sure you get an early start, so you’re not hiking down in the dark. Little did we know how long and strenuous an uphill climb it is – some places requiring both hands and feet to get up.
We made the mistake of ascending the trail to the right of the glacier stream and that put us in a precarious postion of having to scrambling up a steep slope, which caused multiple mini land slides. What we didn’t know and the climbing guides didn’t mention is that you want to cross over the left hand side of the glacier stream as soon as possible to ascend the trail on the left side of the glacier. This route avoids the steepness that you encounter on the right side trail.
We managed to follow the trail with marked rock cairns to the top of the ridge, where we were in sight of the cinder scree of south sister. There we could see multiple people climbing to the top. Cinder scree appeared to be right before us took us another hour to get to.
We finally managed to get to cinder scree where we began our laborious climb to the top. This section is all scree, a mixture of mixed gravel and lose dirt which made your every step slip a little bit. Due to the thin air and many hours of climbing I was having to take 10 steps and rest all the way up.
Once at the top we were on the rim of an ancient volcano where we could see for literally hundreds of miles. The center of the crater was visible and filled with snow. At one time this spewed molting lava covering the surrounding valley.
After 10 hours of climbing we safely made it down just before dark. We were exhausted but thankful we were able to experience climbing one of the tallest peaks in Oregon. It takes a lot of perseverance and stamina to get to the top but well worth the effort. As you can see from the photo’s the view’s are spectacular.
If you’re planning on hiking up South Sister have a look at my South Sister Climbing guide here for some advice.

Green Lakes Trail Guide

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