Mount Jefferson, the most challenging and dangerous peak in the Oregon Cascades, looms above the Pacific Crest Trail in mid-summer. Climbing the mountain on the south side (shown) requires a grueling backpack 2,900 vertical feet up to a base camp, followed by a 4,500-foot climb up extremely unstable rock and pitched glacier to the summit.
We climbed the Milk Creek Glacier to get to the base of Mount Jefferson’s rocky summit pinnacle for the final pitch up. Marked in climbing guides as a “Death Route,” an unchecked fall on the glacier would result in an ass-over-teakettle tumble down ice to bone-breaking boulders 1,500 vertical feet below.
Team member John Englehart sets up a protective belay forty feet below the summit of Mount Jefferson. The Willamette National Forest sprawls over 4,000 vertical feet below.
(L to R) Me, John Englehart and Ed Lovegren on the summit of Mount Jefferson. The black streaks snaking across the huge slab at my feet were caused by white-hot lightning strikes crystallizing the rock.
I (sitting just beyond the gaping crevasse in the bottom-right corner of photo) set up a protective boot-axe belay on Collier Glacier, en route to North Sister's shattered summit.
On the summit of North Sister. The fourth-highest peak in Oregon, North Sister is nevertheless widely considered by mountaineers to be the second-most dangerous of the state's tallest peaks in the Cascade Range, due to its highly insecure footing and frequent rockfall. Those hazards have earned the mountain the jaundiced appellation “Beast of the Cascades.”
Climbing buddy Ed Lovegren (R) and I view Middle Sister (center-right middle ground) and North Sister (far right) from the summit of South Sister on a brisk but unusually snow-free October day.