Saw a report from the week before saying that Pole Creek trailhead is snow free…Wow! How about Middle Sister in January…? Sent the idea to others, but only one agreed. So Chris and I set off Saturday morning, from the Pole Creek trailhead. We found a snow free camp spot at 7100′. No wind, but a bit chilly. After the sun dropped, it got down right frigid. After melting snow, and filtering water, we called it a night…at 5:00pm…gonna be a long night. Up at 5:00am and climbing by 5:30…we found ourselves navigating by headlamp and a GPS track I recorded in ’08 (last time I’ve been on this side of the mountain). We decided to take an extra long break to wait for more daylight…We hit the saddle at about 8:00am, but not before the wind started to blow. As we crossed over to the shady west side, all hell broke loose. The whole west side of the mountain was cladded with a thick layer of chunky ice, and the wind blew 50-60 mph… The climb up the steep icy crux was fun with no pro, but we faced in and two tooled the descent. We didn’t spent too much time on the summit, as it was very windy… All in all, very fun climb. Chris Wilson’s first Middle Sister summit…congrat’s!
More pics here in my Picasa Album
🙂