Trail Seeker

What started out to be a 40 something mile trip soon became apparent that it wasn't to be. We started at Elk lake, east of Bend Oregon. After a mile and a half we arrived at the Pacific Crest Trail. It was our goal to walk north to Santiam Pass, it would take us along the east side of the Three Sisters, though the Mt Washington wilderness before making it to Santiam Pass.

Our first obstacle was a large blowdown

Once through it we had to find the trail again, noticing off in the distance a sawed log clued us in to where the trail continued. It was soon after that we hit snow. It was a timbered area so following the trail was somewhat out, it became a time to use the GPS to carry us onward. We finally made our way to Sisters Mirror lake where we stopped to enjoy dinner. 

We decided to carry on a bit further, hoping we would break free of the snow, but around 8pm we stopped for the night and realized we were not going to continue up the PCT, walking and navigating such a distance in snow would have been very fatiguing. We decided to stick around the South Sister area for another day and make our way over to Moraine Lake.

The next morning we made our way to Wickiup planes where a good portion was snow free, then we turned into the timber relying on the GPS once again. We crossed through some open areas that provided us with some new snow features, here we could see the drain tracks in the snow

We finally made our way over to Moraine lake where we spent some time pondering and having lunch.

Kate posing in front of South Sister, Moraine lake is to the right still pretty much snow covered. Moraine lake is a popular area for climbers to camp before ascending the peak. I stayed here back in 1983 before climbing South Sister. Our exit was to Devil's lake, a campground and staging area for climbers. 

This trip was in the middle of July, a testiment to the heavy snowfall of the winter of 07/08.