The Sisters caught me by suprise rising out of the 4 days of long forest of lake after pond after lake. With a first view of the red and white cap of South Sisters through a break in the green of trees, it was like a hint of things to come. Out of Elk Lake five mountains stand sentential watch over the divide in the cascades, the three sisters, broken top & mount bachelor. Surrounded by remains of recent lava flow, ground broken and black, obsidian, rhyolite, basalt and pumice stand as a mosaic of the mountains upon the lower slope plains.
South Sisters is the first of these glaciated jewels a hiker looks upon coming to their domain. Glaciers draw her cone down, etching through the red cinders to grey ash that lies below. The alternation looks as thought great braids of a fierce redheaded woman, with subtle line highlight the dawn of her middle age. Atop her summit sits a pool to reflect the face of heaven in translucent shades of blue. Held only to those who caught by her spell climb along her elegant ridgelines.
From behind south sisters, stands a younger cone of a mountain. Evidence of age stands in the smooth lines descending down her flanks. Darker tint to the rock gives the fine ones almost a perfection feel like Fujiyama from the westside. As the sun begins to set, the colors of the fading light playout along the fingers of snowfields descending from atop the mountains 10'000 ft high upper reach.
The last of the sisters stands to the north. The eldest bound in roots to the youngest, the etched interior rock of the mountains magma heart stands exposed like many to the sky by thousands of years of glacier ice that carved away the outershell. Black rock flows surround the base of this mountain. From giant vents and craters that we walk around in long arcs. For one of these craters we ascend into its heart, like the black gate of Mordor, it holds us at bay only welcoming us along fine lines of a trail that works its way throughthe jumble. Indeed, the twin fingers of the oldest sister, looks north towards the broad solder of Washington, just beyond McKenzie's saddle. And one white glacier streams down a cirque that long eroded away.
The mountains of this area, seems to demand more time of me , begging for deeper research. To round their base in a grand arc and to explore the sanctuary between, middle and south, I will have to return for another trip. But with Jefferson and Washington on the horizon, as always my way leads north.
From the backcountry mile
Ridgewalker
山武士
Http://ridgewalkernw.blogspot.com
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