Mount Jefferson, Oregon

This past Thursday, I left home for another mountain climb with my good friends the Christensen brothers. This time, I climbed with all three brothers, so you will see Adam as well as Jared and Dave in these pictures. The other man is our friend and sometimes guide, Billy.

I picked Dave up from Paul, ID at 8am Thursday. From there, we headed to Twin Falls to retrieve Adam. The three of us drove to Boise for lunch, a speeding ticket, and some gear shopping. We left Boise in the afternoon, turned south at Ontario, Oregon, then wound our way to Bend for dinner. Our route then took us through Sisters, Oregon then to the Mount Jefferson Wilderness where we camped at the trailhead to the Jefferson Park area.

We ran into snow pretty low on the trail, and an hour after we started the climb, it began to rain.

We climbed on despite not being able to see a mountain, and eventually, we made it to the glacier and the beginning of a river.

We climbed until we reached 6,400 feet above sea level around 7pm (we started at 4,000 at 9:30am). We dug platforms into snow on which to place our tents. Then we melted and boiled snow to hydrate our dinners.

 We were in bed by 7pm where we tried to sleep while listening to the rain patter against the tent wall. We got up the next morning around 4am. Everything had frozen to a wonderfully crisp and climbable crust. We headed up the slope.

 You can see the saddle between two peaks. That was our target from 4am to 9:30am when we reached it.

 It looks steep because it was.

From here, we turned to the left and attempted the rock spire in that direction. It led us to a narrow bridge across loose rock and thin ice to the true summit. I took no pictures because I was anchoring in to hold our leader while he explored the precarious ridge. We chose not to take it, so we climbed back down to the saddle. We then attempted to skirt around the ridge on the south side. Here the ice was thick, and a short slope led to a big cliff. Again, the leader and I scouted ahead and found the route beyond our abilities. We headed back to the saddle, then down to camp.

It was disappointing to not reach the summit, but we had a lot of fun and climbed in new conditions and topography. This was great. We all had fun.

I led the way down the mountain. We had to go hand over hand, one step at a time, backwards down the slope while looking between our legs to see the next move. Since Billy and Jared had kicked excellent steps on the way up, we had an easy time going down.

This climb had it all: bergschrunds, crevasses, glissades.

 On our way down, we turned around and finally saw the mountain in its entirety. If we had had the weather of day two on day one, we would have never made it up through the snow fields. The slush was too soft. If we had had the weather of day one on day two, we would have never left our tents and headed for the summit. It was too wet and cold. So even though we did not make it to the absolute highest point, we did well, and we had a good time.

This flower was in bloom on the lower trail. Sometimes, we found it popping up through the snow.