Starting from the Pole Creek TH (Middle Sister), the trail is snow-free for about the first 3.5 miles. Snow was continuous enough to begin skinning around 5 miles in. Trace and I went directly up the Hayden Glacier to the Middle-North saddle. The snow on the north ridge was icy/rotten and full of sharks, so I dropped skis at the saddle and booted up from there. No one else was on the summit and we didn't see anyone else coming up behind us. Pretty nice for a sunny holiday weekend. After descending back to the saddle, I skied down the Hayden Glacier on perfect corn all the way to the treeline.
Smith
Once back to the car, we made a quick stop over at Smith Rock and then continued on to the Devil's Lake TH (South Sister). We slept at the trailhead and started again Sunday morning. The trail was snow-free for about 1.5 miles and then snow became mostly continuous around 3 miles in. I was able to skin most of the way to the foot of the Lewis Glacier, but there was one short section of bare scree that forced me to carry skis. There were heavy winds most of the way up, and a couple gusts almost knocked us over.
After reaching the summit, I skied SW down the mountain towards the Clark Glacier. The snow up near the crater was still a little crunchy, but after 500 feet or so it gave way to some really nice corn. There were a few bottlenecks with just enough snow left in them to allow a continuous ski all the way back to the flats. A week or two more and I'm not sure if there will be a complete line down the south side of the mountain.
That's such a sweet view from the top of South w/ the Middle and North, Chambers Lakes, Jefferson, Hood...and even looks like you got a ghostly Adams in the zoom in?
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