Not dreaming of a 'white' birthday

I am a 32 year-old kid now!

For my birthday celebrations this year we went off grid (and local). I've been out of town/country for my last two birthdays and it was really quite nice to be able to celebrate it with others--well mostly Joe.

We decided on backpacking/car camping/hiking in the Sisters Wilderness, which is quite literally in our new backyard. It was incredible.

Also a 32 year-old kid.

We had intended to take an alternate (read: less popular) route to the famed Green Lakes. However, we got snowed out! We started at a meadow trailhead, which only had a couple of other vehicles parked at it. It was rather a bit more chilly than we expected, but absolutely beautiful. We encountered only a few people along the way, a forest service person who chatted with us and asked to see our permit--she noted that the trail was covered in snow a bit further on, but was encouraging regarding our ability to locate it. The meadow was only about 5 miles in from the trail head and we still had about 5 more miles to cover to get up to the lakes--

South Sister from Park Meadow

We didn't linger at the meadow, which was gorgeous and full of frogs (or perhaps it was toads). Instead we started to look for a better way to cross over the creek to get to the trail on the other side. Even though it is now late July, it's really spring in this area, so the waters run high and there is still a substantial amount of snow on the ground. Joe found a precarious limb to leap from, I just gritted my teeth and walked through the skinniest, shallowest bit I could find, boots and all. So I sloshed through the next few hours.

Covering my ears in mosquito hell.

The next group of people we ran into was a group of young boys who had been trying to find Golden Lake--the one that the guidebook says "only experienced hikers with a compass and a good map should attempt." They had lost the trail and the turn off in the snow and had decided to trailblaze up the creek. Confident in our own skills at trail finding (heh heh, I know, right?), we carried on. And we found the snow. And we were misled by other footsteps and we found three more guys wandering in circles looking for the trail. They also gave up and headed back toward the meadow. We marked our steps (er, some of the time) and took up where they left off. After several missteps and false starts, Joe found the trail. He called to me, "it even has a sign," which thrilled me, because I had begun to seriously doubt that if we did find the trail again, that we wouldn't just keep losing it in different snow drifts.

I did not take a picture. The sign said "Golden Lake."
So, we found the hard to find spot...and lost the official trail. We decided to throw in the towel as well. Back to the meadow...but which way? We spent a few minutes in mild panic and then found our footsteps in the snow again. We probably tacked another 4 miles on in our effort (although I wager a guess that I walked a full mile more than our trails counted on due to always being moving so as to not be mosquito food--pacing during lunch, dinner and so on).

We forded the creek again, this time, sans shoes (I don't think my feet have ever been so cold)--I didn't even put my shoes back on, just wandered in my dripping wet, frozen socks on the sun warmed pine needles. We camped at the meadow, which was mosquito paradise and spent a quiet night munching on our packed in goodies and enjoying a birthday bourbon.

The next morning, we packed back out and went in pursuit of a campsite adjacent to the next days trail.

I'm stumping for Nalgene.

Wildflowers--mountain Lupine I think...

We picked a site about a mile down the road from our Friday trailhead and immediately across the road from our Sunday one. We reveled in cold water and beer from our cooler that we had squirreled away in the trunk early Friday morning. And we did a lot of this:

View from our site: the high point on the right = Sunday destination.

Almost accidentally trod on by me...

Ahhhh car camping...

Our Sunday morning dawned fairly early with the sun, Joe busied himself with breakfast--coffee and grilled cheese sandwiches--and I started to pack up. I went to get water from a creek close to our site and ran into some friends from Eugene--what are the chances of that?! They had been on the rim trail (which Joe kept calling Tamarind paste) the day before and warned us of snow--but promised that following the footsteps would not lead us astray. It was a pretty steep start, but then a gradual assent--it took us a bit to get to the first viewpoint, but what a reward:

Jefferson--almost floating in the sky

Joe views the peaks

Middle and North Sisters

South Sister

Broken Top

It was rather windy at the top...

The view from our wind-break, lunch location

flowers!

Bachelor and a married man

One of the many snow fields--much more fun going down

Looks like Entmoot to me.

All in all, it was a spectacular three days. I'm sore and I have more mosquito bites than I can count, but it's nice to have such a great playground to take a few days getting (literally) lost in.