May 31- June 1, 2009, South Sister

As I was driving through Bend it started to rain. I got to Devil's Lake Trailhead at 5 pm, and it was still raining, hard. I decide that I'd take a nap and hopefully the thunderstorm would pass quickly. The rain had stopped by 5:30. Headed off up the trail to set up camp in the big flat area at about 7000 ft. Snow was continuous from the car, but it was iffy in places, there may be a couple short carries required by now.

Woke up bright and early and was off for the summit at 4:30. Skies were cloudy but nothing ominous looking yet. Headed climbers left up to the Clark Glacier as that looked to be the most likely for continuous snow to the summit. Snow was soft from the night before and I skinned up to about 9000 ft. From there to the summit I put my skis on my pack as it was too steep for skinning with the soft rain saturated snow.

After waiting around on the summit wondering if the sun was going to come out I decided to head down at about 10 am. The rain saturated snow was nice and soft, it skied like corn. The skiing was great on the upper mountain but by the time I got back down to camp my bases had been gummed up by pollen. The ski out from my camp to the trailhead was time consuming and irritating with my now sticky skis. Anyone know how to stop pollen from gumming up your bases?

I heard thunder as soon as I got back in sight of the car at 1pm. As I drove off a full fledged thunderstorm hit.