Italy Day 1: Are We There Yet?

Monday and Tuesday, September 23-24

Travel from RDM to FLR

Highlight: Cold cuts and cheese for dinner with Neal and Lyn in Tuscany

Lowlight: 10 hours of temper tantrums from a child with permissive parents

Neal and Lyn's House in Tuscany

We'd been planning our getaway to Italy for over a year, our first big vacation since Alaska in 2021, and suddenly, D-Day was upon us. To date, it had not really seemed like we were heading out of the country for three weeks, likely because the planning has been so long in the works.

With the current excessive rains and flooding all over Europe much in the news here in the US, we wondered what kind of weather we were going to be headed into. Certainly the forecast for our first three days, our time in Tuscany, called for rain all three days. This would be a far cry from the gorgeous fall weather that you see in every movie and documentary about this beautiful region of Italy.

The last time I went to Europe was before my kids were born and strangely enough, I’ve never been to Italy. I was a bit anxious, truth be told, wondering how I would communicate in a language that I don’t really know. I had a few semesters of Italian in college, but that was 40 years ago and I've never had even a single occasion to dust that Italian off and practice it. What I learned is well and truly gone, at least from the currently accessible parts of my brain, though things will likely come back to me as our stay progresses.

I feel more confident in French, which I speak fairly well, in German from my trips to Germany, and in Spanish, although my Spanish is pretty much much limited to restaurant kitchen Mexican Spanish. And of course, there’s always English, which Europeans tend to speak. Beyond that there is Google translate. This latter facility, as we would come to understand painfully, is only useful with a reliable cell signal and data plan.

In any case, my anxiety was not really called for. Between the two of us, Ann and I would be able to communicate, however imperfectly it may have been.

For our long, long journey to Italy, we would be flying from Redmond to Seattle to Paris and then into Florence, staying in Tuscany with Neal and Lyn, Dyce's mother and stepfather. They very kindly invited us to stay with them and we took them up on it.

Looking at our itinerary, it seemed so weird to be leaving on Monday morning and arriving after dinner on Tuesday, the price to be paid for living on the West Coast. All my prior European trips originated at Dulles outside DC where we would depart at dinner time and arrive first thing the following morning. 

Monday morning, ready to go and sitting at home, suitcases by the front door, the pre-travel butterflies kicked in. When I am not in control such as when waiting on the car service to take us to the airport, I worry a bit. I need not have as our driver rang the front door bell a full 10 minutes early. Because it never takes any time to get through security at RDM, we generally plan to get to the airport about 30 minutes before our flight.

Arriving in the late morning, we encountered no security line. We were first and second in line and we were through security in moments. As we waited in the crowded waiting room, we started hearing the insistent beeping of a fire alarm. We and everyone else assumed that they were testing the alarm and paid it no mind, but soon enough, a voice on the PA advised us that we needed to evacuate to the tarmac.

After slowly making our way out back of the terminal with scads of others to stand in the blazing sun, we got the all clear after standing around for maybe two or three minutes. This little charade delayed boarding slightly, maybe by five minutes, but did not delay our flight. As we were boarding, we found ourselves in a group of USFS firefighters from Mississippi standing down and returning home after fighting fires in our vicinity. We and many others thanked them for their help. We are truly appreciative of those who help keep us safe.

One of my first thoughts on boarding is that fall flights are great; the children are in school so no screaming kids as on summer flights. This thought would come back to bite me in the ass on the next leg. 

We arrived in Seattle quickly. This is a flight that climbs for 20 minutes and descends for 20 minutes. The bulk of the trip time is in boarding, deboarding, and taxiing. There was no gate available when we arrived; they held us on a taxiway for about 10 minutes. This delay was immaterial because we had a 6-hour layover at SEA before our 6:15 flight to Charles de Gaulle. Unfortunately, there were no better options with shorter layovers. 

Arriving at the lunch hour, we searched for some place to eat, hopefully a place that would have a final American IPA before we arrived in a country that is not known for its beer. We ended up in a so-called brewpub featuring "local craft beer." The place was woefully understaffed and the bartender had huge attitude. We both ordered fish and chips on the basis of seeing a pretty good looking product coming out of the kitchen. It was actually tasty Pacific Cod, though super expensive. The chips were not all that and the beer list and our IPAs were a poor representation of Seattle brewing. 

Surprisingly Good Fish and Chips at SeaTac

Boarding at SEA was a fustercluck like somebody kicked over an anthill. Because of the passport checking and facial recognition screening, the boarding process occupied the better part of an hour.

There was a screaming two-year-old in our row. I blame it on the parents who I believe were speaking Punjabi. Clearly, they are converts to permissive parenting and they found it cute when the child had a tantrum. Worse, they rewarded the child's tantrums by giving her whatever it was that she wanted, reinforcing that tantrums are a great way to get what she wanted. On top of this, the members of the extended family were standing, yelling at each other to be heard across the widebody plane.

We assumed things would settle down once we got underway, but we were sadly wrong. I am surprised that the flight crew did nothing at any time in the 10-hour flight to quell the noise that was clearly disturbing our entire section of the plane. I am also surprised that not once did they make the child be seated, not even during take-off or landing. This so reminded me of a horribly unpleasant flight 30+ years ago in coach class in a British Airways 747 from Heathrow continuing to DC from Bombay, as it was called back then.

The roll-out out at Seattle was really long as you might anticipate for an A330 full of around 300 passengers, luggage, and fuel. The flight attendant doing the announcements in soft-spoken French with an American southern twang was hard to understand with some sketchy pronunciation. The Air France crews with whom we flew to and from FLR were much easier to understand.

Because of the child and her parents having no regard for any other passengers, I got no sleep. On top of this, my seat would not recline and I could not get comfortable. And apparently neither could Ann: she was super restless the entire flight.

Shortly after we left, about 8 or 9 hours after we ate lunch, the cabin crew came through with dinner. Eschewing the rubber chicken entrée, we both got something called Mozzarella Manicotti with Bruschetta Sauce. What is bruschetta sauce, you ask? It is surely not a sauce made from bread as the name implies. Rather, it was just some oversalted tomato sauce. Much later, at 2:45 a.m. Pacific Time, the time my body was feeling, the cabin crew served us coffee in paper cups emblazoned with “Great Coffee.” I found this quite aspirational for really shitty coffee.

WTF is Bruschetta Sauce?

Needless to say, we arrived in Paris exhausted. And I think Ann was feeling it worse than I was; I am at least somewhat inured to being tired. As we transferred terminals from the international arrivals to European departures, we got a big surprise. Ann had filled up her water bottle when we got off the plane without realizing that we had to go through security yet again in changing terminals. We have not flown internationally in so long that it took us unawares.

The French agent was a dick to exhausted Ann when she tried to bring her full water bottle through, not thinking and on autopilot trying to reach the next gate. The agent was a typical Parisian; a fucking dick and a half to Americans, yelling at Ann in French. For this reason, even though I speak some French, I've never been a fan of Paris. I prefer the countryside where people are chiller and more happy to meet anyone who has come to visit their town.

I was busy putting all my stuff into bins for the screening machine so I did not catch on right away to what was going on. Also, my under-caffeinated brain cells were not firing very rapidly. Ultimately, I understood the situation and asked the agent, who was selectively deaf to all of Ann's English, where she could dispose of the water. Meanwhile, the line behind us was growing and growing. I finally got directions to the nearest restroom and sent Ann off that way.

Then I focused on the agent, telling him in French that we were very tired, we were surprised that we encountered a security screen without at least a warning sign, and that I was prepared to stand and hold up the line for as long as necessary. At this point, I had earned enough points by speaking French that he asked me if I had Ann's boarding pass and when I answered yes, he took my phone, scanned both boarding passes, and put both our luggage through.

When Ann came back, he hand carried the water bottle through to us on the far side of the body scanners. At this point, he switched with another agent from scanning boarding passes to reviewing the luggage scanner. Except, he didn't really. He wasn't in a hurry to do anything and was actually looking at and chatting nonchalantly with other agents, letting the luggage come through the scanner apparently unreviewed. Bizarre. 

At CDG, it appears that nobody is in a hurry. Immigration was trivial, but because of only two open windows, it was a 30-minute wait in line. The immigration agent was actually more friendly and was happy to hear me speaking French to her, comprehensible French from a person presenting an American passport being a rarity. She wished me well in Italy and waved me through where I joined Ann.

We found a departures board and identified and found our gate. While Ann sat and came down from her battle with the security agent, I found an ATM and scored some Euros. Then we set about finding something to eat and drink. We ordered a bottle of so-so Champagne at the caviar bar in our terminal, because for her first visit to Paris (to which she vowed not to return), she should at least have Champagne.

The food offerings in our terminal were not great, so we chose not to eat at any of the restaurants. I would later grab her a sandwich, a jambon beurre or some such, at a little bakery outpost. At the caviar bar, I switched my phone to the 24-hour clock for convenience, as all the flights are posted in 24-hour time.

Exhausted Annie at CDG

After our mediocre and overpriced Champagne, we went back to our gate where we saw that our flight was delayed. Our plane apparently just shuttles back and forth from CDG to FLR and weather at FLR was holding up its arrival. As we were sitting at the gate, we were having to cope with cigarette smoke. No matter that there are enclosed smoking rooms at CDG and other European airports, it always manages to create a reek in the terminal. It seemed to me during this trip that I saw fewer people smoking than I had on my prior trips. Ann disagrees. In any case, way more people in Europe smoke than in the US.

Who Knew Tabasco was a Thing in France?

As we were sitting, we noticed that boarding appears to be a cattle call, a mass of people swarming the gate unlike the more orderly boarding by groups in the US. We also noticed that this terminal at CDG seems quiet, dark, and a little long in the tooth. We tried to charge our phones at the airport, not realizing that there is a USB voltage mismatch. We would need a special adapter that we did not have for our USB cables. USB was not even a dream in some young engineer's mind on our last trips to Europe.

At the gate while presenting our passports and boarding passes, the Air France agent made us gate-check our bags that we carried on the Delta flight to Paris. I was irritated that this would delay our getting away from the airport in Florence. The implications for the interior of the plane did not even register with me.

I am so used to A320s on domestic flights in the US that it never dawned on me that Airbus has entirely different configurations for European carriers and Air France in particular. As soon as I passed through the door of the ancient and shabby A318, I sensed that I was in a cattle car. The seats were jammed together like in an old-school low-budget 727 with no leg room. As I was contemplating my fate as just another sardine in a can, I looked up and saw the reason our baggage was checked. The overhead bins have no space. But I still think that we got singled out for this treatment because of our American passports; there were some larger bags in the bins.

The cramped flight with my knees in my chest was not a lot of fun. Moreover, Ann had to go to the bathroom and left her seat once the fasten seatbelt sign went off, only to be scolded in French by a flight attendant. All this on no sleep made us grumpy customers.

As we were descending into Florence, the captain announced in French that the runway is very short and to prepare ourselves for maximum braking. He was not joking. As soon as the plane hit the ground, he stood on the brakes and we lurched violently forward bracing ourselves against the seatbacks in front of us. Deplaning took a hot moment because they brought up a bus to the plane to move people a grand total of 200 yards into the terminal. Why?

Clearly the baggage crew works on Italian time. It took a half an hour to collect our bags before we could exit through customs to find Neal waiting for us in the waiting room. We finally got away from the airport at 20:45 local time, about an hour late, and 25-1/2 hours after we left our house in Oregon.

I was so thankful that Neal had offered to pick us up at the airport and that I did not have to deal with Italian roads and drivers on no sleep. To reach their house, we took the A11 autoroute WNW out of Florence to Pistoia and then headed due north up into the hills on a winding road that seems kind of crazy in the day and insane at night. We reached their house in the dark night in about half an hour.

Welcome at Neal and Lyn's Complete with Candlelight

We arrived at their small home in the hills in a village of a handful of houses called Croce a Uzzo. As we entered that house, we got warm hugs from Lyn and met Bella the cat. The candles on the table were a wonderful touch and we felt at home almost immediately. Within a few minutes, Neal busied himself in the kitchen and brought to the table a basket of bread and a platter of cheese and charcuterie. We chatted and enjoyed this simple meal, our best of the day, over a glass of red Tuscan wine. 

Neal Pulling Together Dinner

After chatting for a while, Ann and I headed upstairs to call it a night. Halfway up the stairs, Neal said, "If you hear a strange noise outside, it's just the deer." He was not kidding. It was right in the middle of rut and the Red Deer bucks were screaming in the night, bellowing like elk. I likened the experience to trying to sleep beside a stock yard.

I remember nothing else about the evening, day one and day two of our trip, merged into a single sleepless day for us.

Southwest Oregon Trip

Toward the end of our rafting trip on the Owyhee River at the beginning of May, we had expressed interest to our guides in rafting the Rogue River in Southwest Oregon, a part of the world that neither Ann nor I had visited before. In early May when we got a note from Momentum, our guide company for the Owyhee float, that two spots had opened up in August for the Rogue, we reserved immediately.

Starting our Rogue River Rafting Adventure

In thinking about the logistics of getting to and from the Rogue, we decided to build a trip around the float. We would visit Crater Lake on the way and then follow the Rogue River all the way into Galice, OR where we would meet up with our fellow rafters and the Momentum crew. After finishing our rafting trip, we wanted to visit the only part of the Oregon coast that we had not seen before, from the California line to Florence, reputedly the most beautiful section of the coast.

I had planned to go north along the coast all the way up to Florence before heading home, but both Ann and I got sick after rafting. We cut our stay on the coast short by a day, power driving the coast to Reedsport and up the Umpqua Valley back to home, the shortest route available. Power driving while ill sucks. Sorry OSP, I was the guy driving 70 in the 55 zones and 80 elsewhere. Sorry, not sorry.

So, we still have not seen from Reedsport to Florence, but that will have to wait until our next visit to the coast. For now, our agenda is struggling through this illness. It may or may not be COVID, but we're not putting anyone at risk going out to get test kits.

During our trip to the Owyhee, I took about 1500 photos. On this trip, I made a conscious decision to take fewer and to take more time to be present and so among the three cameras that I brought on the trip, I shot only about 550 photos. As much as I like to look at the photos long after events, I like to immerse myself in those same events and those two goals can conflict at times.

So, the cameras spent a lot more time in the dry bag or dry box. As a consequence, I missed some shots, notably a great photo opportunity of a little mink struggling across the rapidly flowing river, but I will never forget watching it and rooting, along with everyone in the raft, for the little guy to get across the river safely.

Our trip posts break down thus:

Southwest Oregon Trip: Crater Lake

Southwest Oregon Trip: Crater Lake to Galice

Southwest Oregon: Rogue River Day 1
Southwest Oregon: Rogue River Day 2
Southwest Oregon: Rogue River Day 3
Southwest Oregon: Gold Beach and the Southern Oregon Coast

Despite having to cut our stay at the coast short, it was still a great trip. We can now check Crater Lake off our list; it is not a place to which we are likely to return unless we are escorting guests there.

Our experience on the Rogue was wonderful and quite different to the Owyhee. The Owyhee's scenery is mind-blowing, the most beautiful canyons that I have ever seen. On the other hand, the weather on the Owyhee is necessarily chilly; early spring is when the snowmelt is highest. By contrast, the opportunity to swim, float, and play in the warm water of the Rogue was delightful in its own right and not to be missed. I am ambivalent about the lodge-to-lodge trip on the Rogue; I might have preferred camping near the river to have the rushing whitewater lull me to sleep at night. The experiences on both rivers were wonderful, just very different ones.

McArthur Rim Trail to No Name Lake

"A Lake Has No Name"

Without a doubt, No Name Lake in the Three Sisters Wilderness at the foot of Broken Top is one of the most visited destinations near Bend for those who are able to hike moderately difficult trails. At 8000 feet of elevation, it is the highest lake in this part of the world, fed by the remnants of an almost extinct glacier on the east face of Broken Top.

No Name Lake and Crook Glacier Remnants
left to right: Ball Butte, Tumalo Mountain, Mount Bachelor, Broken Top

In surfing the recreation.gov app for a potential Central Cascades Entry Permit last weekend, I found an opening at Three Creek Lake, the Tam McArthur Rim Trailhead for Tuesday. The timing wasn't ideal as we had guests over on Monday night, but then, opportunities to score entry permits this time of year are scarce. I preferred an entry permit at a trailhead off of Cascade Lakes Highway because those trailheads are a shorter drive, but I got what I got, even if it meant driving to Sisters and then backtracking south about 15 miles.

In scoring the permit, I wasn't really thinking about hiking all the way to Broken Top, but I had contemplated visiting it several times over the past couple of years. In starting at the Tam McArthur trailhead, that would mean a round trip of over 12 miles with a couple of decent rock scrambles. Coming off a bad illness a couple weeks back (likely COVID), I knew I felt a bit weak and wasn't sure how much I wanted to bite off. Still, driving an hour to the trailhead and back, a total of two hours, just to hike five miles to and from the Tam McArthur Lookout seemed rather pointless.

Before I left home, I texted Ann (who was still asleep) that I would decide whether to press on to Broken Top when I got to the top of Tam McArthur. When I head out into the wilderness, I like to let someone know where I will be and when to start worrying if I do not return. I expected not to have signal out there to let her know my plans in real time, but there was marginal signal above 7500 feet in certain areas. I was able to let Ann know that I would press on to Broken Top. And I was able to send her a the photo above from 8350 feet on the rim above No Name Lake.

I was away from home just after 7:00 and starting up the trail at 8:05. The drive out of Bend was smooth despite all the road construction on the northside. Once I got into Sisters and turned south on the paved but bumpy NF-16, it was beautiful, if cloudy. Low clouds were scudding along and each time I would sight North Sister, the top was obscured with a cap of clouds. At the southern edge of the Ponderosa forest where because of the elevation, the trees were starting to change to firs, hemlocks, and Lodgepole pines, I spied a pair of large Mule Deer bucks with their big racks still in velvet. They will start scraping their antlers in just a couple weeks.

The final couple of miles into Three Creek Lake is a washboarded gravel road which my Tacoma does not mind in the least. I arrived at the trailhead sign to see perhaps five other cars pulled off the side of the road. I pulled in behind them, sucked down a pint of water, ate a banana, and hit the trail.

I would return to the truck mid-afternoon, my previously broken left foot aching from the long rock scrambles and my bum right knee screaming in its brace from the long and at times steep downhills. God, how I hate downhills.

I loved this hike and I am really surprised at the wildflowers still in bloom, a testament to the heavy snow cover this past winter. I rarely get the chance to see alpine flowers and so many of the ones that I photographed, while similar to species from lower elevations, are new to me. No Name Lake is as beautiful as I have heard and I look forward to going back, perhaps from a different trailhead next time. The photos below are in the order that I shot them.

If this post contains a lot of photos of the clouds, it is intentional. Rarely have I ever seen more interesting and photogenic clouds. In many cases, I want to call the cloud cover lenticular, but that may not be entirely appropriate. It seemed in many cases that each of the tall peaks above 9000 feet was topped with a cloud resembling a beret.

The trailhead sits at 6500 feet on the eastern side of Three Creek Lake, about 4 miles as the crow flies ENE of Broken Top. As the trail heads south along the lake, it climbs pretty quickly through a typical Lodgepole Pine and Whitebark Pine forest. I was greeted raucously by a bunch of Clark's Nutcrackers as I made my way up the hill towards my initial goal, the lookout on Tam McArthur Rim.

Tam McArthur Rim Lookout in Center of Ridgeline

In several places in the initial climb, the trail goes across what seems to be vertically oriented slabs of shale. Sedimentary rock like shale is not really a thing in the volcanic realm of the Cascades. This shale mimic is a high silica content rock called andesite.

Above 5000 feet, our typical rabbitbrush is Bloomer's Rabbitbrush, a cousin of Rubber Rabbitbrush but not of Yellow Rabbitbrush, both of which are easily confused. Bloomer's, however, is a shorter (rarely more than knee-high) shrub with pretty yellow blooms that are more attractive than those of the other two.

At river level, both Rubber and Yellow Rabbitbrushes are just coming into full bloom, the Yellow Rabbitbrush being the earlier bloomer by about two weeks. I noticed on my drive south out of Sisters that the Bloomer's Rabbitbrush is nearly finished. The patch below is the exception at 7000 feet. I did not see any plants above 7000 feet, however, which seems typical. It seems to stop about the tree line, 7000 feet, on nearby Tumalo Mountain.

At 7000 Feet, Bloomer's Rabbitbrush, Ericameria bloomeri

Neat Clouds on Top of North Sister

Mount Washington Peaking out of Clouds

Once the trail climbs to altitude from the lake onto the rim, it bends to the west and climbs along the rim to the viewpoint. If you look at a topographic map, you can see why it is called a rim. The so-called rim is a relatively flat space on top of a large steep escarpment to the north. It looks like a giant with an ice cream scoop dug out three huge scoops from the hillside. In reality, the giant was one or more glaciers that carved out the cirque that now contains Three Creek and Little Three Creek Lakes.

This is our Common Lupine, Though I Know not Which
In Bloom in Narrow Band at 7100 Feet

Another Look at Cloud Cover on North Sister

North Sister Peak Finally Visible

When a Lodgepole Pine and a Mountain Hemlock Occupy
The Same Spot: A Mix of Cones at the Base

Heading to Viewpoint, First Look at Broken Top

Broken Top with Broken Hand in Front

Partway to the viewpoint, you leave the trees behind and walk through an off-white pumice plain decorated here and there with splashes of color principally from various buckwheats, the occasional Dwarf Lupine, and the bright red leaves of Newberry's Knotweed (Koenigia davisiae) changing color and heralding the arrival of fall.

Sulfur-Flowered Buckwheat, Eriogonum umbellatum

Alpine Wild Buckwheat, Eriogonum pyrolifolium

Just before climbing to the viewpoint looking out over Three Creek Lake, at around 7500 feet of elevation, I started seeing lots of Cobwebby Paintbrushes, which do a remarkable job of blending into the bare ground around them. This is a plant that blooms typically in a light butter yellow, but ranges to a dusky orange/dull red. I found specimens of both, and an intermediate form with both colors.

Yellow Cobwebby Paintbrush, Castilleja arachnoidea

Intermediate Coloration

Dusky Orange or Dull Red Coloration

Approaching the Tam McArthur Lookout (elev. 7732 ft.)
Short Whitebark Pines (Pinus Albicaulis) on Top
Mount Washington on Horizon to Right

Another View Showing Little Three Creek Lake and Three Creek Butte

It seemed like it took no time to climb the 2.5 miles to the lookout where I was rewarded with excellent views to the west of Broken Top and Broken Hand. Moving to the north, Middle and North Sister seemed so close. To the north and below, both Three Creek and Little Three Creek Lakes glistened. Depending on cloud cover, I could at times see Mount Washington, Black Butte, and Three Creek Butte. On a clearer morning, I should have been able to see Three-Fingered Jack, Mount Jefferson, and Mount Hood. They were all visible when I walked back over the lookout in the afternoon.

Cresting the Lookout, Middle and North Sister
"End of Trail," Really?

Broken Top and Broken Hand Across the Sheer Cirque Walls

Three Creek Butte and Three Creek Lake

Feeling not at all like I had begun to walk after a mere 2.5 miles, I texted Ann that I decided to continue on in the direction of Broken Top (due west). Fortunately, I had a little signal in most places above 7500 feet (excluding the cirque containing No Name Lake at 8000 feet). 

As I moved along the steep rim of the south cirque wall, I got to see a massive rockslide on the former headwall of the glacier. The sun was starting to come up in the sky and light the Cascade peaks to the west as the morning clouds lifted. In a matter of 100-150 yards, I came upon the classic USFS CYA sign reading "Trail Not Maintained." This always seems to me to be where all the fun starts.

Massive Rockslide on Former Glacier Headwall

I Sent This Photo to Ann: Clouds Over Broken Top

Headed for Broken Top
"Trail Not Maintained" Should Read "Fun Begins Here"

Coming down slightly off the lookout, you enter a vast largely treeless pumice plain that runs along between 7700 and 7800 feet. This is the first opportunity to see to the south, the direction from which I originally wanted to approach but for which I could not get an entry pass. Although a lot of clouds to the north and west had already burned off, I really enjoyed the cloud cover on Mount Bachelor

Tumalo Mountain, Mount Bachelor, Ball Butte

Ski Runs Visible Below Hat-Like Cloud on Mount Bachelor

The walk had already been exposed for the past mile with the exception of a few patches of stubby pine trees here and there. Out on the wide open pumice plain, there would be no tree cover again all the way down to No Name Lake. Although the pumice plain looks barren to most people, it actually contains a nice selection of alpine flowers if you pay attention.

In This Four-Square Foot Tableau: Cobwebby Paintbrush, Sulphur-Flowered Buckwheat,
Tundra Aster (Oreostemma alpigenum), Silver Raillardella (Raillardella argentea),
Pacific Lupine (Lupinus lepidus), Alpine Wild Buckwheat

Heretofore, the temperature had been in the low 50s but the further west and higher I climbed, it seemed to dip into the mid-40s. As I crossed the pumice plain, the rock changed from light-colored pumice to rust-colored cinders. The higher I climbed, the more ferocious the wind became, screaming out of the NNW with nothing to break it. The last real cover I had against the wind was just before I came to a red cinder cone with a bank of snow still on its east side.

Cinder Cone Pushing up to 8000 Feet

First Good Look at South Sister (and Middle and North)

Wind is Screaming Right to Left Across This Cinder Cone

Cinder Covered Ground is Largely Bare Except for
This Grass (an Elymus?) and a Few Scattered Dwarf Alpinegold Plants

After ascending the cinder cone, still headed almost directly west towards Broken Hand, the trail becomes a classic ridgewalk with the slope dropping away about 400 feet on either side. Up here, there is no break from the wind and I got blasted, being pushed around by gusts that I reckon were about 40 miles an hour. Worse than this though is that I was dressed in shorts, so the constant brutal wind in the sub-50-degree temperature was really cold.

Although I was really happy to be in shorts for most of the walk, this ridge traverse was chilly. I was super happy when the trail dipped about ten feet below the crest of the ridge on the south (lee) side of the hill. I pulled up a seat on a lava bomb and had a good pull of water and a fig bar while the wind screamed over my head.

Midway across the red cinder ridge is a short rock scramble. The trail leads right to it and you take it on faith to climb up 10-15 feet. At the top where it seems there is no trail, the trail becomes quite visible on the other side as you realize how close to Broken Hand you really are.

Broken Hand Left, Broken Top (elev. 9177 ft.) Behind

Classic Butte Formation of Broken Hand (elev. 8376 ft.)

As I climbed to Broken Hand at about 8200 feet, I came to the vertical wall of the butte. The top seemed to loom over my head another 150 feet and the visible trail disappeared. The so-called trail passes to the north side of the butte just below the vertical section but it can be challenging to find. I found that I had climbed a few feet too high and faint trail passed just below me. Ultimately, after a quarter mile of slow rock scramble, you will pass the butte along the 8200 feet elevation line.

Just beyond here, the red rock disappears to be replaced with basalt or andesite of a gray color and a knob (about 8350 feet) covered in stunted Whitebark Pine krumholtz trees looms perhaps a quarter mile distant. The trail is nothing if not a rock scramble and you want to stay to the right side of the knob. After lots of fits and starts, you will ultimately crest the knob. On the other side, after climbing down a few feet, the trail becomes more distinct as it runs along the ridgeline. If you moved at all to the left side of the knob, you will have seen No Name Lake about 350 feet below. If you did not, you will soon see it as you traverse the exposed ridgeline.

No Name Lake (8000 feet) from Knob at 8350 Feet

An Unknown Buckwheat on Rim Above No Name Lake

The further you push west along the rim, the scarier it becomes if you have any fear at all of heights. Me, I am terrified of heights. I pushed my fear in making the final ridge traverse but it was certainly not beyond my abilities.

Looking South, Totally Exposed with Sheer Drops to Either Side

Looking North, Remnants of Bend Glacier

After one good dicey section of sheer drops on either side, the trail starts to descend into the cirque that contains No Name Lake and the remnants of Crook Glacier. Sound rises well from the lake to the rim above. Not only could I hear hikers below me, but I heard the ice fracture a couple of times. It was nothing like hearing a glacier calve in Alaska, but it was neat nonetheless and totally unexpected. It took me a good ten minutes to descend to the water level on the trail that skirts to the east side of the lake, directly opposite the glacier, if we can still call it that.

Looking at both the profuse wildflowers and the small icebergs in the lake, I wandered along the eastern side all the way down to the moraine dam that keeps the lake pent up and where the trail heads south to the trailheads off of Cascade Lakes Byway. Subsequent to this hike, I found out that this dam collapsed, as moraine dams are wont to do, in 1966 and flooded all the way down the hill across the highway and into the Sparks Lake basin.

A Paintbrush Growing in the Middle of a Mat-Forming Penstemon

Very Common in the Red Cinders, Dwarf Alpinegold, Hulsea nana

A Mat of Penstemons, Likely P. davidsonii, Davidson's Penstemon

Nearby, Littleflower Penstemon, P. procerus

Elephant's Head Lousewort, Pedicularis groenlandica

Lakeside: Elephant's Head Lousewort, Paintbrush, Hairy Arnica (A. mollis)

Mat-Forming Tiling's Monkeyflower, Erythranthe tilingii

Remnants of Crook Glacier

Iceberg from Glacier

The Hill That I Descended and Then Ascended
350 Feet to the High Point at 8350 Feet

Little Elephant's Head Lousewort, Pedicularis attollens 

From the bottom of the basin containing the lake, I retraced my steps back to my truck, just over six trail miles away, four miles as the crow flies. By the time I left the lake, 11:45 a.m., the sun was up strongly, the wind had died, and the skies were blue, a totally different day that when I started my hike. The return was much quicker with no real time out for photographs and way-finding. The return route through the rock scrambles was much easier to find having already come in the opposite direction.

One of Many Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrels

A Lava Bomb Looking Like Petrified Wood or a Kid's Play-Doh Project
Thick, Sticky Lava Cooled in Flight After Being Expelled from a Volcano

The return trip was partly unpleasant in that my left foot ached where I broke it in 2023. I attributed the pain to all the off-camber maneuvers crossing the talus slope beneath Broken Hand. Likewise, for the first time in a long, long time, my right knee hurt terribly where I have dislocated my fibula many times. It really only hurt on the steeper downhills even with my brace on. Unfortunately, the way out is mainly a climb and the way back to my truck mainly a descent. I was extremely happy to get back to the truck and take the weight and brace off my knee. Despite the pain, it is a hike I would willingly do again.