South Sister, Oregon

False Summit - Part 1

On Saturday I hiked the South Sister  located in Blue River Oregon with my best friend and wonderful boy Dante. It's a 12 mile round trip hike that we started at 7 o'clock in the morning (a bit later than we wanted to start, but not bad...we're slow morning people.

It's important before you begin a big hike to have a great breakfast and do a gear check!

Dante got to carry 2 water bottles for himself, poo bags, doggy jerky, and his collapsible water bowl. I was carrying 3 Liters of water in my Osprey water bladder, plus an extra water bottle for Dante, sandwich's, other snacks, first aid/bit sting kit, flashlight, space blanket, knife, and 9 mm pistol for good measure. My friend carried about the same gear as myself, her own food/water, and a pistol as well. Us girls were not going to be unarmed for this trip! We're mostly concerned about cougars, but their is always the chance of encountering two legged predators as well. You never know and we live by the motto, "better safe than sorry".

We started at Devil's Lake Trail Head which is the popular and best place to start on the adventure, the first 2 miles are painful and steep but the rest of the miles even out to a more gentle climb until you get to the mountain.

It Begins!

Cool rock!

After the first 2 miles of uphill climbing the thick forest opens up and you can begin to see the South Sister looming in the distance. Once we got out of the trees we took a mid-morning snack break and enjoyed the view.

Broken Top

Fun Fact! Broken Top is an extinct, glacially eroded stratovolcano! It hasn't been active for about 100,000 years!

My beautiful boy and the South Sister in the distance.

Such a beautiful day! Good thing we remembered our sunscreen! Dante was in heaven, I had him on his 6 foot leather leash and he was free to sniff for most of the day without having to be in our normal "heel" position. He did great! He hardly pulled, and all day we worked on "easy" meaning slow down/don't pull. He did awesome!

Their were lots of hikers out and about, if a faster group came up behind us we just stepped off of the trail and let them go past.

The beginning of the hike (most of the hiking) was gentle enough terrain Dante didn't need his boots, but every time we stopped I checked his feet for any signs of wear on his pads.

Lake Moraine

And now began the ascent.

As we began the ascent to the False Summit Dante began to gimp a little bit on one of his back feet, the rocks were getting coarse and was mostly pumice stone. So on went his socks and boots! And thankfully his gimp went right away!

Stopping to smell flowers

We took frequent brakes throughout the trip, wanting to take our time and hopefully avoid injury.

Our view going up!

What you are looking at is not the top! 

The trip up to the false summit was mostly pumice stone and shale, we passed a couple dogs that I felt sorry for - they had no boots and one was a fat old senior dog that really should never have been brought by his clueless/careless human idiots. Poor guy was struggling and the hard part had just begun.

Dante is a huge water drinker! As we worked our way up towards the false summit we stopped regularly and he'd find whatever shade he could and would lay down.

Tired Boy

Everyone we bumped into loved seeing Dante in his boots! He got tons of compliments and he got to meet and greet lots of people which of course he loved!!

You can see from this picture where we started.

False Summit Lunch Stop!

We made it to the False Summit in 5 hours....whew!! Which wasn't easy, we had a few spots where we were scaling our way over boulders. I had to help lift Dante a couple times.

We stopped for lunch at the False Summit for about 45 min, just enjoying the view. Poor Dante just wanted to drink water and lay down, but he enjoyed his jerky and I shared some yummy cheese with him too.

During this break I took off his shoes and shook out his socks while checking his feet - they looked great!

I should mention by this time Dante had drained his two water bottles and was helping me drink my water down - it was easy enough to take the mouth piece off of my Osprey water bladder and create suction to pour it out into his water dish. Even though we kept his pack on him he was just carrying garbage at this point no need to make him carry weight.

From the False Summit its about another 2 hours to get to the top of the South Sister.

Beautiful View

The True Summit

The False Summit and the True Summit...and yes that would be snow in August.  Although to be more accurate, its a glacier and mostly ice at this point.

Can you spy the man down by the water? He's really tiny!!

Check out Part 2 of our journey HERE

Welcome to Monday Mischief - The pet blog hop that wraps up the weekend! This Blog How brought to you byAlfie’s Blog, Snoopy’s Dog Blog, and My Brown Newfies.