This is Part 3 of a three part series. Be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2!

By the time we rolled into the Sisters Motor Lodge and splayed our tents, sleeping bags, and clothes across their lawn to dry, fat cumulus clouds had sprouted and grown to tower over the Sisters Wilderness. We had a cup of coffee and each wolfed a handful of characteristically excellent gas station tacos before dinner (we were eating quite a lot at this point), and turned in early with our sights set on skiing Middle and North Sister the next day.

You should know that the alarm on my cell phone is not your archetypal harsh ringing or buzzing sound. It’s a gentle bell-toned crescendo that doesn’t snap you awake into parasympathetic terror but rather eases you into the morning. It’s also easy to sleep through the first part of it, and the thing had been doing its damnedest for ten minutes by the time I actually woke up at 5:10am. A few minutes later Phil poured coffee grounds directly into his mug instead of the Aeropress, and we conceded that the trip was really beginning to take a toll. Nonetheless, we ate some oats and more candy and by the earlymorning gray were riding our bikes toward the trailhead.

The dirt road was soft, and the thirteen mile bicycle approach took two hours. We transitioned leisurely despite afternoon thunderstorms in the forecast, and by 8:30am were hiking through a recent burn and toward the Sisters, which were obscured by clouds.

We spent several hours walking on flat, dry soil before we could don skis. The experience was familiar, and not only from earlier in the trip, on Jefferson. We’d heard numerous harrowing stories about the approaches to some of the mountains we had in mind, but compared to backcountry skiing in western Montana, the approaches were dreamlike. They have trails in Oregon that go to where the skiing is! No bushwacking required.

Fun ski trips at home have given new meaning to my surname, and most friends won’t come out for a Saturday ski, citing the pejorative “Horan Adventure.” These kinds of adventures tend to include a great deal of creative route finding and good natured discomfort.

The creative route finding and good natured discomfort that we turned up in central Oregon was downright pleasant by comparison, and I felt a new kinship to that guy who keeps getting shot down in Catch 22:

“If you had any brains, do you know what you’d do? You’d go right to Piltchard and Wren and tell them you want to fly with me.”

“And get shot down with you every time you go up? What’s the fun in that?”

“That’s just why you ought to do it,” Orr insisted. “I guess I’m just about the best pilot around now when it comes to ditching or making crash landings. It would be good practice for you.”

“Good practice for what?”

“Good practice in case you ever have to ditch or make a crash landing.”*

*Taken from a free online version of Catch 22 which further fact-checking reveals is perhaps of dubious integrity or abridged, but you get the point.

Skiing in the Missions is great practice for if you ever have to ski in the Missions, or in other places where approaches don’t involve skinning from the car.

But eventually we did put on skis, and after looking west all morning to a mass of clouds which we suspected held mountains, we finally got a look around 11.

By late morning the day was already quite windy, and with a stormy forecast we doubted that our original plan, to ski the Middle and North Sister, was still in the cards. Even so, we scooted up the SE ridge on the Middle to find a cloudy, windy, and enjoyable summit with no view of North Sister and then leapfrogged holes in the cloud cover down the way we’d come up.

Later in the day we would have the opportunity to see an intuitive and straightforward ski line down the north face of the Middle and directly to the foot of the North, but lacking visibility we opted for the circuitous and not-at-all straightforward traverse of the not-totally-snow-covered moraines that flank the volcanoes. Two hours of boot packing and a little bit of semi-exposed fancy footwork allowed us to stand on the Quitter Summit of North Sister, near the base of the rocky summit pinnacle. Wanting for both ropes and daylight we called this the top (remember a summit is really only defined by how you draw your axes). It was about 6pm at this point, and rather than being struck by lightning we enjoyed a cloudless quiet snack before dropping back to the trail.

In spite of low expectations and tired legs at 0500, we were out for sixteen hours and made it back to pizza and beer at the Motor Lodge after dark.

In penciling this trip out, I was a little bit worried about the itinerary taking us through Bend so close to the finish. The plan was to stay in some fancy digs there, then ride past Bachelor and finish up in the south end of the Sisters Wilderness. Mike had to leave us for things like “work” and “an infant son,” and so getting him to the airport aligned nicely with a short layover in town with creature comforts and soft beds.  It also gave a premature sensation of closure on the trip, and riding toward darkening western skies and minus one compatriot felt less like triumphant culmination than self flagellation.

Our spirits rose while we approached the Fall Creek trailhead but were met halfway by torrential rain, hail, and lightning. Tom, Phil, and I sat drinking beer in a USFS outhouse, illuminated only by the glow of our phone screens while we looked at the weather forecast. Rain. Hail. More rain. Lightning. A local guy who said he’d like to ski with us texted a cancellation.

And so we pulled the plug and retreated to Bend. A glance the next morning confirmed that it was the right call: heavy storms in the Sisters would have kept us far from the top, but it was still an unceremonious end to a great trip (cue montage). We skied from (or from near) the tops of four volcanoes in an area we’d never explored. It’s one that I know I’ll be back to, skiing in the Sisters was particularly impressive, and I suspect that to catch Jefferson in corn is one of those Until The Dementia Gets You kind of memories. We rode for hundreds of miles along roads that seemed purpose built for bicycle touring, and found cinnamon rolls like they made them in the old country at KC’s in Detroit.

The trip was at once a release of nervous energy and ambition, and fuel for the fire. The terrain, difficulty, and company of these two weeks is the food of dreams, and another reminder of why we chase horizons.

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This is Part 2 of a three part series. Be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 3!

When Scott Fitzgerald boasted that all he needed to write a tragedy is to be shown a hero, I doubt very much that he had in mind a bunch of guys riding bikes around the northwestern United States. And to be fair, I suppose we were only heroes in the eyes of our mothers, and spending two weeks leisurely skirting rain storms in Oregon doesn’t fit any definition of tragic that I know. But that doesn’t change the feeling that our trajectory from resplendent blue skied summit photos on Mount Hood to cowering around a sixpack in a Forest Service outhouse a fortnight later while lighting and hail descended on all sides felt something like a fall from grace. It was at least an inauspicious end to our tour.

See, the weather is a funny thing. It’s the element in our lives that has the most bearing on our mood and well-being over which we also have zero control. As a result of this, it obsesses us. “How’s the weather” is a cliche for small talk when there’s nothing substantial to say. The Weather Channel churns out regional forecasts 24 hours a day, yet when it turns sour the only advice they can offer is to grab an umbrella, stay indoors, or screw plywood over your windows.

When we arrived in Oregon we had the clear skies, warm days, and cold nights that had been typical for the area for a month. After we’d spent a couple of days the horizons darkened and the rain began to fall; we were reminded why sailors are superstitious and ancient cultures attributed storms and drought to having displeased the gods. When our discomfort is inexplicable we search for something to blame, even if it requires fabricating a scapegoat.

I blamed Phil.

Early on the weather couldn’t have been better. Warm sunny days and clear cold nights made for buttery corn snow on Hood, but gave way to turbulent low pressure and rain for the next ten days. Sure, the stormy weather corresponded nicely with the time that we spent on the west side of the Cascade Divide, remaining blustery but dramatically less damp as soon as we crossed back to the east and to Sisters, but it also corresponded nicely with this:

Here, we have an image of Phil swilling a hoppy ale at the top of our first of 6 objectives with the caption, “Mount Hood: #OWNED!”. Oh, the hubris – and so early in the trip. After perfect weather for the first several days, it seemed like hours after this photo got its first like, the clouds formed and opened and we spent the next week in the rain.

Undeterred, we made our way south toward Mount Jefferson, living on 6,000 calories a day of Snickers bars, Swiss (not Swedish) Fish, and freeze dried chow mein. I’ve never eaten so much candy in my life. With bikes as heavy as they were, we were trying to balance carrying as little as possible to save weight with the fact that the only resupply spots before Sisters are gas stations and grocery stores that are really just gas stations but without the gas. For several days I got much more than half of my caloric intake from gummy bears and candy bars, and it wasn’t quite as cool as eight-year-old me might have guessed.

Somewhere outside of Detroit I pointed us toward a steep, winding dirt road which led us 7 miles and 3,000 vertical feet toward a trailhead on Mount Jefferson. I say “a” trailhead because while not technically incorrect it was not “the” trailhead that we were looking for. Phil smoothed things over in camp with a round of fresh greyhounds which at once kept me from being tarred and feathered, and dissolved any animosity I still held toward him for having single-handedly caused all this rain.

The weather delay before Jefferson was also a great opportunity to sleep for 14 hours, because at this point in the trip I was beginning to get very tired. In 11 days on the road, we didn’t take a rest day. Sometimes we might only ride for a few hours, but that’s still a three or four hour ride on a 150 pound bike, which doesn’t count as rest even if all you do for the remainder of the day is eat candy and nap.

When we finally started walking on Jefferson we left camp with a vague idea of where we were headed: through a misty rain and up (kind of left then kind of right then kind of left again until we’re on the top – n.b. don’t fall off any cliffs) and low expectations. In spite of a negative prognosis, the approach through the temperate rainforest, while wet, was pretty and made for an interesting walk.

The rain we’d been riding and living in for a few days had manifested as snow above around 6,000 feet, and so we skinned and then booted to 9,500 or so. Higher on the mountain we found ourselves standing on steep and unfamiliar terrain, and the four inches of heavy snow was only partially bonded to the older surface. Deteriorating visibility pushed us off of the shoulder and we camped another night before heading to Sisters.

Jefferson was far from a low point. Hiking through the rainforest with skis was a fantastical experience, and what glimpses of the alpine landscape that we stole there were dramatic and compelling. Mostly, Jefferson felt like the end of a chapter. We’d been at odds with the weather, and as we rode away the next morning the blue skies over the summit there seemed both to taunt us and promise better luck in the Sisters Wilderness.

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Just put another first half trip report up over at Dirtbag Dreams. Check ‘er out, and keep your eyes tuned for more updates!

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