Distance: 19.6 mi.
Elevation Gain: 8200 ft.

We met up with our friends who were living in California at the time (they’ve since moved back to Washington! Whoo!) at the Green Lakes Trailhead in Deschutes National Forest and hung our Interagency Annual Pass. We slept in our car in the parking lot and got started at 7:15 AM. It was a nice, easy-to-follow trail with some pretty cascades. We made it to Green Lakes around 9 AM and found a spot to set up camp.

Laura decided to stay back with the dogs while Brian, Craig and I headed northwest along scree and patches of snow toward South Sister.

This isn’t the typical ascent route so there were no crowds until we hit the main trail at 9,000 feet after about an hour and a half of hiking from camp. We followed the main trail north to the rim for the final 1300 feet and followed around to the right (east) until we hit the true summit. There were lots of shenanigans going on on the summit for the 4th of July weekend, including inflatable pools and empty beer cans strewn about. We hung out on top for a bit and then made our return along the same route.

The trail was dusty and steep so it required careful foot placement for the descent. We saw a few hikers nearly falling over from exhaustion on this climb, so be careful out there and bring lots of snacks and water.

We had a fun evening back at camp. The next morning, Craig and I decided to go up Broken Top. We started out at 8:30 AM. Considering how gnarly it looks from below, the trail up the ridge was pretty tame.

We only hit a couple tiny patches of snow. It eventually came time to do one 4th class move and then a kind of sketchy traverse right (south) along the rim of the old crater, which had a faint boot path to follow. We curved back left (north) for the final ridge walk to the summit and reached the summit at 10:30 AM.

We retraced our steps and made it back to camp at 1 PM, passing a couple of groups heading up Broken Top. We packed up and made it back to the car around 3:30 PM. We stopped at one of our favorite breweries – Crux Fermentation Project – and found ourselves some sweet, sweet air conditioning for the evening 🙂

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Download GPS track

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Recommended brew: Crux PCT Porter

Gear Used:

• Backpacking tent
• Gaiters
• Glacier glasses
• GPS
• Helmet
• Sleeping pad
• Summer sleeping bag
• Steel ice axe
• Stove
• Trail runners
• Trekking poles
• Water drops/filter

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