South Sister, the "easy" sister.

"South Sister turned out to be a decidedly less than extreme climb that demanded nothing more in the way of technical skill than energetic walking, and was in fact ascended by hundreds of farmers, house pets and small children every summer." - Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

This speaks to my frame of mind as I loaded up my car and headed to Bend to meet Jesse for our "energetic walk". I had done a little research and knew it was 12 miles, but other than that I was going in blind. We met in Bend, drove the 45 minutes to the trail head, parked our cars and called it a night.

The plan was to start at 5am, when 5am rolled around I had only slept 20 minutes and it was still dark and very cold out so we ended up leaving at 6am. As we embarked on our adventure it was business as usual for team Jesse/Kristi, we laughed (at each other mostly) and caught up on life. Since the beginning of this year Jesse has been my hiking partner extraordinaire, we have laughed our way thru directional challenges, battled unmaintained trails, and even suffered heat stroke, but in June he moved to Eugene and it'd been a couple months since we'd hiked together.

We arrived at Morraine Lake and I made the comment "so we should be at the summit in about 1.5/2 hours... right?" Jesse chuckled at me, yea no. I love hiking with Jesse because we have the same sense of humor, every hike we have a Princess Bride moment where we talk about one of us falling down a hill shouting "As you wish!!!!", then there's the Malcom in the Middle moments where we start sounding like the asthmatic kid that can't breath, usually followed by a nostalgic talk about some 90's tv show or movie (this time it was Sister, Sister). We laughed at the gaggle of over exuberant "bros" that passed us as we made our way to the false summit.

It was a mostly enjoyable hike up, although admittedly I probably should have stopped at the false summit. We stopped and ate lunch by a beautiful alpine lake and I got to feed a chipmunk right out of my hand! I made Jesse take a picture of me while I was feeding said chipmunk to which he responded "Sometimes I forget you're a girl" in his most disgusted voice, that may have been the nicest thing he's ever said to me =).

We spent then next couple hours battling volcanic scree and finally made it to the summit where a fellow hiker greeted us with "Congratulations! You're done with the optional part!" Crap. After doing our best Dumb and Dumber reenactment "We're here!" we sat right where we fell. The Summit was beautiful, with panoramic views of Middle and North Sister as well as Mt. Bachelor and Broken Top. After spending about 1.5 hours at the top, it was time to go down. I found this to be less than pleasant. As hard as it was to climb up the volcanic scree, it was even harder come down. It's worth noting that other people (everyone else) seemed to be getting down with relative ease however my bad knees did not allow me this luxury. I was passed on the way down by literally everyone, this included a Chihuahua with a limp, not shining moment for me, but luckily I have a stellar buddy that refused to leave me behind despite me telling him to numerous times.

The 6 miles back felt more like 16. I prayed to see the road around every bend and started to question if I really enjoyed hiking. After a 13 hour grind we finally made it back to the cars! In this adventure there was blood (Jesse), sweat (both), and tears (me), but it was worth every step. If I had to do it all over I would do it again in a heart beat. There is something intangible about the bonds that you build while out on trail, sweating, and hurting, and laughing all the way (well, most of the way). Thanks for the adventure Jesse!