How excited am I? ..... Extremely!
I've never backpacked South Sister, let alone any of the Sisters (North and Middle Sisters).
This has been on my bucket list. For the first time, I am dehydrating our food and prepping our own meals for the next 6 days. Trying to lighten our load more this time around as well with less clothing, and with less water; however, during the summers I get hot very easily and overheat. I become nauseous and end up with a migraine. Sometimes, I get fainting spells.
During any other season though, I get cold easily. Weird huh?
As I was saying, since I won't be using my water bladder it is going to be different. I feel it may be a little rough but according to our research it seems that we will always be around a water source of some sort. There will be swamps around but we are definitely not trying to filter swamp water for consumption. Even if our Sawyer filter is that good.
Speaking of Sawyer water filter, I purchased the newer mini filter and they have it to where it connects to a Smart water bottle so it makes it much easier to filter and have it ready to go! And you can still just filter it into your water bladder as well if you prefer.
So, we started off pretty good during the beginning of our hike, with 50 lbs. pack to carry on our backs that included 7 days worth of food, trail mixes, snacks, clothes, etc. (see here for our freeze dried foods, homemade dehydrated meals, and everything we packed for our 7 day backpacking trip on South Sister).
Now, we loaded up our snow gear into a separate bags and put them in a tote to switch out our packs for when we get back to the truck to climb South Sister and prepared to stay for one night. This is because after researching and the time of the year (we were in July, middle of summer), everything and everyone informed us that there weren't any snow on the route we were taking. Which we should have known better because even though it is in the middle of the summer, we are in Oregon and hiking one of the tallest mountains here lol
So... I was wearing my trail running shoes in the snow with a monster pack on my back! falling into the snow with just about every step I took. We came across the lake where it was completely covered in snow and didn't even realize we were walking on top of the lake! That's how thick the snow was.
I began getting soaked and my knees hurting from constantly falling into the snow and trying to lift my legs back out of the snow only to fall back into it! My boyfriend is so innovative, I love it. He made some spikes for my shoes to get better grip on the snow using paracord and paper clips. Which safety pins and paper clips are a great emergency tool to keep around when you're backpacking, hiking, or just camping.
Once we got to our first stop, which was on top of the mountain beside the lake, we set up our tent and made dinner. It was very windy but we hung out inside the tent with our lamp and had a peaceful night cuddling each other.
Hiking up the steep mountain wasn't so bad as long as you go up diagonally. We both do not like switchbacks but hiking up diagonally helped us grip better and balance better. I would much rather do that than using most of my energy to climb straight up with all that weight my back and risk slipping or falling. Oh! ... and trekking poles! I know I know, a lot of people we meet do not like the thought of using trekking poles but it definitely makes a difference. Especially when backpacking because they're like an extra pair of legs. And in the snow... we have slipped on a steep hill while dragging our sleds with our packs on them before. We were able to dig the trekking poles right into the snow to be able to stop us. Whew! The trekking poles have saved me quite a few times to be honest.
We ended up coming back to the truck and realized how bad of a shape I was in as I hadn't hiked in over a year at this point. Which is not like me because I used to hike at least once a week. So we ended up not climbing south sister and camping at the top overnight to wake up to the sunrise :(
We heard that it will be very windy up there and I truly wanted to sign my name and cherish my accomplishment; however, my body did not want to cooperate with me. It's ok, because I am going to get back on my grind to get some more backpacking/hiking in so you all can join me on my journey and adventures!
Needless to say, we still ended up having a great time! the hike up the mountain in the snow and back down the next day. Meeting skiers along the way as they swoosh and zig zagging down the mountain. Which inspired us to slide down the mountain as well except we didn't have a sled or skis. so what we did instead was slide on our bottoms and after a while it would burn but man! It was so much FUN!
We did end up backpacking a different section and ended up at Cultus Lake where we hiked into a private beach, boat in only, site. Because I got so sick and felt like I was coming down with a fever, we ended up staying there for a rest day then booked it back, as much as possible, to the truck. We had a beautiful doe come visit us for about an hour. She kept wandering around our campsite in the evening and came extremely close to us by the fire as we were eating dinner. She was very sweet. we kept hearing a bunch of deer doing mating calls all night too!
How we ended up at this site was in the middle of the night hiking trying to get as far as we could. Was because I ended up getting really sick and so Daddy (Please click here to better understand why I call my partner "Daddy") was looking on the map to try to find the nearest dispersed campsite for us to get to. The sun was setting very fast causing us to have to hike in the pitch black with headlamps. Now mind you, we had a very close encounter with a cougar not too long before it got dark. The cougar was hidden behind some bushes, but was probably 15-20 away from us, possibly closer. Daddy was walking in front of me and I thought I heard a growl but wasn't sure and figured it was probably him that was grunting or something because we both were tired at this point.
As I am thinking that it could possibly be him making this noise, I looked up at him and saw him stop then slowly turn his head to the left. That's when I knew instantly that he heard the same thing I did and confirmed that he did not make that sound.
As we both come to a halt, we hear the growl again so we both grabbed our pistols and slowly walked by as we both look in the direction the growl is coming from. The growl sounded closer and closer then she hissed at us and you can tell she did a "fake" attack to try and scare us off. As we continued to keep walking away slowly, it started becoming very dark very quickly.
But.... as it became pitch black, we hiked for another 20 minutes or so in the darkness before we arrived at the private beach that we were not even aware of because it was so dark. We could just tell it was a campsite. We settled in and cowboy camped. Woke up the next morning and to our surprise, there it was pass a few trees and shrubs.... there was a beautiful sandy beach!
I will be adding some photos from our trip here soon. Bear with me :)
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