Broken Top is one of five major Volcanoes in the Sisters area of Oregon. It's highest peak sits at 9,175 ft.  Most of the mountain has been eroded away by glaciers. Left behind is a breathtaking mountain with red colored lava pinnacles and super steep skiable faces. 

Jamie and I headed up to the Todd Lake trailhead and were skinning by 5am.  The snow was a little patchy down low, but we only had to portage our skis over the dirt a few times. 

The approach from Todd Lake to the Summit is about six miles each way.  The snow was frozen solid making the side hilling with skins a bit difficult.  Within a couple of hours we neared the tree line and got our first views of the summit and lines we wanted to ski.  

The original plan was to ski from somewhere near the summit on the Crook glacier. The highest summit on Broken Top is in the center.  As we got closer  to the mountain we began to see how rimed out the summit was and how an approach from the north would make summiting much more possible on the eroded volcanic rock.  We reached the tree line by around 7:30.  The snow was heating up super fast and we decided to head  up to the South Summit.  

We skinned up the south ridge on the left with hopes of skiing off the southwest summit onto the ramp with the exposure below.  By the time we reached the saddle and the final approach to the summit the east facing snow was totally rotten and roller balling, so that awesome ski descent was out.  

The views of the volcanic pinnacles are off the hook! There are so many incredible lines to ski.  

We reached the Southwest Summit around 11am, enjoyed the views, ate a snack and hurried down to catch the corn before it was gone.  

We ended up skiing the Southwest Face.  The snow was perfect!

 Always special thanks to Jamie for coming with me and shooting the photos on these great adventures!

Also, special thanks to these great companies...
Black Diamond Equipment           Scarpa             Flylow 

Yesterday we skied Mt. Bailey.  Today, Mt. Thielsen! 2 Volcanoes 2 Days.  We got started from the Mt. Thielsen trailhead at 6:30am and hiked snowless through the trees for 3 miles towards the west ridge.  We had plans to ski something on the northwest face.  

We gained the ridge with the summit view within a few hours and decided we would ski this face (the snow on the northwest side looked like it would hold up the longest to the bright sun).  The summit route is on the southwest side of the mountain and mostly snow free, so we skinned as far as the snow went and changed back to our tennis shoes for the summit rocks.  

It was about 800ft from where the snow stopped to the summit rocks.  I think this might be a better ski in early April. 

The summit pinnacle is literally a bunch of small boulders all piled on top of each other.  Below is a picture of the route on the south side of the summit rocks. We climbing straight up this.  Some say it's a class 5 roped climb, others, a class 3 scramble.  I think it could go either way depending on the route you choose, right in between, a class 4 scramble, no rope necessary.  

We reached the summit at 11:30!  

We headed down and were skiing by about 12:30.  Perfect corn for about 1500ft!

We popped back up onto the ridge and followed it down through the trees to the trail.  We saw one other person all day. Great to meet you, Shelly.  Just three women ripping on the mountain today!

Found the top of Mt. Bailey today. My first Volcano this spring. Very exciting! Mt. Bailey at 8,368 ft sits on the west side on Diamond Lake in central Oregon.  

There are a few different ways to approach the summit of Mt. Bailey, we took the southeast ridge route. You can drive to the end of a forest road and the hike would only be 2.5 miles each way.  With high hopes, we drove up that way to no avail. Snow blocked our path within a mile.  So we retreated around to the east side, drove up another road to try to shave off a few miles of dirt walking.  The GPS said the trail was only a 1/4 from where we parked, so we bushwacked our way through the trees, over a stream, through some spider webs and up a hill.  After all the clambering around we finally found the trail around noon. A little late for skiing volcanoes.  After a couple of mile of walking with skis on packs on the dirt trail we found the road we could have drove to the end of and from there continuous snow!  I believe it was around 6,080 ft.  

Up and up we hiked through the trees, never very steeply.  The trail is super easy to follow.  There are blue triangles on the trees every fifty feet or so.  The only real tough part is you never can see the mountain until you are basically on top.  

From here, you can either crawl along the ridge over the rocks or walk around the back of the crater.  We chose the later.

The top of the SE ridge was pretty cool.  We took our skis off to hike around some rocks, then on up to the big round summit!

The snow was half melted off the summit.  It was beautiful up there!

We hung out for a bit, ate some lunch, then skied down the big east facing bowl and followed a snowmobile track out.  That track brought us right back to the forest road where we met up with the trail and donned tennis shoes back to the truck.