We were supposed to climb Mt. Baker this weekend, but the weather looked a little iffy with snow falling and rain foretasted for our approach. Eileen gave us another choice to go up Prouty glacier on South Sister and that sounded like a good compromise.
I met Dave at his house and later Jean came and we were off to Sunriver to stay at Eileen's house there a day before the climb.
It had been over 25 years since I was last at Sunriver and it is just as nice as I remember it and some more amenitys by now I think like the big pool and the water toboggan.
We ate outside at the Sunriver Brewing Company on their patio. I had the Lava Butte Burger a BBQ burger with pepper jack and Vicious Mosquito IPA both were excellent and I left feeling full after the drive. Karen came late for dinner, I had climbed Mt. Olympus with her last year. We then left for Eileen's house and to met the other members of our team.
When we awoke Eileen knew a great spot to get some breakfast so we headed over to the Cafe Sintra for a bacon omelette and a generous Americano in a bowl. Then it was off to Green Lakes trail head.
The hike in was pleasant, although much of it was snow covered, the mosquitoes weren't that bad if we kept moving. The only people we saw all day were two climbers making their descent from Broken Top. The suncups were something to be reckoned with though as they covered the last half mile to our camp.
This was the first time I slept in my Big Agnes tent, everybody else camped on a few dry patches but I camped on snow to see how it did. It just fine for an alpine start, if any more days I would have liked to have a zero degree bag or two mattress pads.
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Here is Broken Top at first light just before we roped up.
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The climb was steep from the start and I think we did pretty well, we in fact got a little to high on traversed our way to the begin of the Prouty glacier and the had to descend a couple hundred feet to rope up. There were two rope teams and I was at the very back of the pack and in charge of picket cleaning. Karen and Heather were in front of me on my team.
Here are North Sister and Middle Sister is covered up by rocks. This is where we took a break where we avoided rockfall.
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The bergschrunds were small and maybe the biggest difficulty of the ascent was rock fall and the snow getting a bit to soft. We made it to the top of Prouty where the tarn is and me a Jean went to check out the true summit before heading down via the south route before glissading down to Green Lakes. We then took a little bit of break, filled water bottles and trekked the four miles back to our vehicles. The snow was by then a slush fest but we Jennifer found a good trail and we made to best of it. The bridges we thought might give of some trouble but someone else had cut steps down and it worked out fine.
I am proud to have climbed this, although I am disappointed we didn't climb Baker I think less then 100 people climb this route per year so kudos to our team!
Prouty glacier and the chute the was our route.
