Donaldson Crew Adventures

I took Hunter and Noah on a day hike today as they wanted to try something longer.  Hunter wants to to South Sister so I thought this might be interesting practice, plus the books said it was very unknown but beautiful.  It was a lot of off trail hiking and scrambling with approx 11 miles of hiking completed and 2300 ft of vertical taking up up over 7700 ft in elevation.  

The trail was pretty uneventful moving through the Pole Creek burn area for the first 2 miles with filtered views of the surrounding mountains.

After this we headed slightly off trail for another 2-ish miles up along the banks of soap creek staying to the north side.  The trail if you could call it that was off and on so we picked our way up towards a ridge that finally allowed up to get a view of the hulking main mass of north sister up close.  Our target was the yellow bulge to have lunch - the kids wanted to touch snow.  You can see the little snow to the left of the yellow budge and then the kids going across these small snow fields in the 3rd and 4th pics

From here we scrambled up further to see if we could find this supposed lake... I was not hopefully but the guide book said it was there if you just scrambled up a little more.  Then Boom - as we crested the moraine it came into view.

On the way down - we followed the creek properly and what a treat.  Green lush valley, bubbling stream, tasty water.