Three Sisters Traverse/Marathon ATTEMPT
Oregon, United States, North America

Three Sisters Traverse/Marathon ATTEMPT

Page Type Page Type: Trip Report
Date Date Climbed/Hiked: Sep 13, 2015
Activities Activities: Mountaineering
Seasons Season: Fall

Foiled by Southie...


This trip was meant to be as light & fast as possible so we packed the fewest possible calories, brought the most minimal amount of gear, and planned to stop for water when it was available.  We elected to use the "Killian Jornet method" and use our body's motion to provide warmth- all stops were multipurpose meaning that if someone needed to pee, that time would also be used to grab anotherKIND bar out or to add/remove layers as needed.  Communication was key and we talked constantly about different landmarks to aim for, how we were feeling, how we felt about our pace, etc.. our food selection was also a crucial aspect of this trip.


Going into this trip, we felt decently prepared- we did some intense looking into what went wrong on our trip up North Sister the previous month, reviewed the topos for beta to get over to South Siter, and talked through timing, our turn around time, and how much wiggle room (if any) we would allow ourselves during this trip.  The trickiest portions of the traverse were finding the most direct path between North and Middle, and finding the correct ridge to get up the North side of South.

We elected to aim for a less-heinous-from-the-ground looking ridge for our push up South and, unfortunately, chose wrong. Six hours after leaving the summit of Middle Sister, we found ourselves facing a dead end and, with our view of the ridge we'd been aiming for being improved, we realized that the likelihood of having a refridgerator sized rock drop on us during our ascent was higher than we were willing to risk.  Regretfully, we turned around and began the long, depressed, exhausted walkout that comes when you realize that 20+ miles of moving and route-finding as quickly as possible has yielded 2 of 3 summits.

For a more detailed account of our trip, including our gear list, lessons learned, and track, check out http://www.mountainrefugees.com/#!three-sisters-traverse/g39d6.

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