The Three Sisters Marathon Loop -- An Amateur Guide

The Three Sisters Marathon Loop -- An Amateur Guide

After a failed attempt in 2019 to complete the Three Sisters Marathon Loop (climbing North, Middle, and South Sister while starting and finishing at the same place), our calendars marked late August the following year for another attempt, the reprisal, the remontada. 

Perhaps overconfident and imbued with a sense of fearlessness (heck, it’s August 31st!), we overlooked all weather reports and spent a sleepless night at Pole Creek trailhead as high winds whipped through the pines. The 3 am wakeup alarm was a relief as we could focus on hiking and not the increasingly cloudy skies. The first five miles towards Camp Lake and up the climber’s trail were fine. But as soon as we rose above the tree-line the wind really started to pick up. 30-40 mph north-westerlies (allegedly 50+ at the summit) and we were only at 7k ft on the east side of the mountain. Clouds completely obfuscated all three sisters, and moisture drilled horizontally into our faces. We were equipped with short running shorts, light windbreakers, sneakers, and nothing else. It was miserable. So we decided to bivvy-out until sunrise in a small rock cave just off the climber’s trail. Fortunately, we recently watched Survivor: Palau so we knew how to safely make a toasty fire to help our numbing hands (pro tip: log cabin fires are supreme). With a bit of cell-signal we determined that the forecast would eventually improve, but we did not know if it would improve fast enough to complete the marathon attempt.

Sunrise was slow, with smokey-haze delaying the arrival of warm light. But after nearly an hour in the biv and slowly improving conditions, we trekked on towards the North/Middle saddle. We got a little turned around and lost at a couple of points. After all, we had basically no idea where we were going (in 2019 we foolishly tried to scramble up the south-east ridge). Once we made the saddle, navigating the south ridge of North Sister was easy but slow going--the loose scree to thank for that. On the upper ridge, the winds had calmed a bit (~25-30mph gusts), but it was chilling to the bone. The Terrible Traverse and Bowling Alley were iceless, thankfully, unlike in 2019. And after a slow and focussed scramble to the top at 9:30, we were quick to get back down out of the wind and into warmer weather.

[A side note on the Terrible Traverse and Bowling Alley: We had no climbing gear/ropes, just helmets to protect from rockfall. These two sections felt very difficult. It did not help that it was way colder and windier than we anticipated. Sending this for the first time without someone who had done it previously was not a great idea.]

The descent to the North/Middle saddle was easy once we were off the top of North. You can slide most of the way down on the loose scree. No rest for the weary, we wanted to get our second peak of the day out of the way as soon as possible. We lost a ton of time in 2019 on this next section. Then, we ended up going way too far out on Prouty Point and got slowed down by this extra distance and a lot of big boulder hopping. We made sure not to make this mistake again. We took a perfect route on the eastern edges of several large snowbanks and directly to the Middle Sister scree slopes. This scree ascent is under-rated in difficulty. While not dangerous or long per-say, for us it was a 30-minute grind on all fours, clawing up the loose slopes with the extremely tough rocks tearing up our hands. We made the top of Middle Sister by 11:30. This was well ahead of schedule considering the hour-long bivvy at the start. Despite our `good’ time we met an absolute legend at the top of Middle Sister who said he was going for the South-to-North Sister Marathon Shuttle FKT of 6:30. Maybe to you ultra-marathon/hiker types out there this seems remotely possible for a human being. To us amateurs this is completely inconceivable. Either way, chapeau sir, we hope you got the record!

The next section was our least favorite part by far: the south-side descent of Middle Sister. This is a 3.5/4k ft. descent on the worst imaginable surfaces. No loose scree to slide down. No snow-banks to glissade. Just basketball-sized rocks, loose and heavy enough to crush a toe or roll an ankle. It took nearly two hours to reach the basin. On the way down, one of us suffered a bit of an episode. His mom dropped him on his head when he was young, so he occasionally gets very blurry vision. Anyways, the long-short of it was that for the next seven hours our friend’s eyes were not aligning properly and he saw double. So instead of navigating the 10,000 boulders on the way down Middle Sister, the poor chap saw 20,000. At this point, we actually thought we weren’t going to make it. The vision issues really hampered any ability to descend and we still had a long way to go ahead of us. Because we were looping back to Pole Creek, we did not want to descend South Sister in the dark. For us, this meant that we had to summit by 5:30 at the latest. But the cruel embarrassment of failing for a second time really started to hit us. And we had to keep going.

After refilling water bottles (we tried to keep it pretty light ~2L each), we started the trudge upwards. We aimed for the north ridge. The climb was slow and brutal. In particular, the upper half of South Sister is very steep, and while it never gets as technical as the Bowling Alley, after a long day of hiking it feels just as difficult. There really was not a trail, we just followed the ridgeline as well as possible. At one point, as we were about 100m below the buttress, there was a major rock-fall through one of the chutes to the west of the diagonal climber’s-rope. This certainly raised the nerves as we traversed through the buttress. After making it through this section, in our tired state, we completely forgot that the buttress was not the summit. Once we got above it, we were unpleasantly surprised to find that we still had another 400 ft of climbing to the summit. 

[A note of warning on the north ridge of South Sister: for first-timers on this we were super lucky that we climbed up before descending this ridge. Doing the descent would be difficult without knowing exactly where you should go. The chutes at the top lead to gnarly cliffs, and if you do not take the correct chute to navigate diagonally beneath the buttress (as of this date this section is roped) you could be in real trouble. In addition, the down-climbing above and beneath the buttress was easier because we knew the exact route we came up. Since people slide down these slopes in a variety of directions, it is difficult to identify much in the way of tracks.]

Summiting South Sister felt like a relief, it was 4:30 giving us plenty of time, but we held the happiness in check until after we completed the descent. At this point, we aimed directly for Camp Lake. It took us a while to reach the lake as the bottom portions of the basin are surprisingly difficult and frustrating to navigate. But thirty minutes before night-fall we finally reached the clear waters and smooth trail. An actual trail had never felt so good. We completed the last two and a half hours back to Pole Creek in the dark. All we could think about was McDonald's and the possibility of them serving all-day breakfast. And just under 19-hours after we left the car, we made it back. The brutal punishments delivered across the day did not stop, as we rolled into an unlit McDs which had shut its doors at 10 pm (0/5 yelp rating, will look into Burger King for future trips). The four-hour drive back to Portland without food was tough, only aided by the crackling sound of BBC news reports on Cuban music in Florida and breakthroughs in data storage through glass disks and DNA as well as the fact that we completed what all-day felt like the impossible.

In addition to tired legs and bruised hands, our gear took a beating. We both wore cheap (new-ish) shoes with the intention of throwing them out after. Indeed, that is what we did. Here is the aftermath:

The one clear consensus we got from this day was that we are certainly never doing that again. At least not the looped version. It is a nice one-time accomplishment and we will look back on the day as a successful feat but probably not a fun time. 

[Below is an approximate GPS trace of our route]: