Thursday morning I was driving into work when a friend sent me a text inviting me to join him Friday on a hike up North Twin Sister and well obviously I said yes, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this.
I had some familiarity with this mountain, I’ve read a little about it and know some guys that have been up there, but honestly I didn’t really know much. During the day Thursday I took a quick glance at the Mountaineer’s page on it and at Summit Post. My buddy said we’d leave early and be home mid afternoon, those sites put the vertical elevation gain at 5,400 ft. As I was reading the reviews I thought I read that it would take 5-7 hours…. Something wasn’t adding up but whatever, the forecast was good and I needed to pack, download maps, and get some food.
We got an early start and arrived at the gate around 7:30 am, just as it was starting to get light out. It was cold and frosty but clear with the intent to be a gorgeous blue bird day. This “hike” begins at the the middle fork of the Nooksack river, a boulder strewn river with fast running water.
We slid our bicycles under the gate and began the 6 mile uphill slog. The first 4 or so miles was all on really well maintained logging roads and we alternated between riding our bikes and pushing them. I usually don’t mountain bike with a 20lb backpack so there was perhaps a little more pushing than riding. As we wound our way up we had amazing views of Mt. Baker and the Black Buttes. We could also see North Twin Sister as we climbed higher, an imposing pile of rock with a little snow on it and what appeared to be frozen waterfalls on its north side.
We pedaled and pushed on, riding across a sketchy frost covered bridge planked with 12″ wide boards that had a couple inch gap between them, soon after that branched off the road we were on to an abandoned logging road that is now mostly covered with young alders. This path seemed to go virtually straight up and we continued to push our bikes up it for nearly 2 miles. It unceremoniously ends at a small campsite that this particular morning was covered in frost and very well frozen with needle ice. We left the bikes there and started up on what was our best guess of the trail.
For the next bit we pushed our way through small trees and brush as we went up and up through the forest. The smaller trees and brush eventually gave way to a stand of larger trees and then we were out of that and onto the base of the ridge. The trail at this point had some leftover bits of snow here and there from the storms we had earlier in October and the trail was full of ice needles.
The trail wanders a bit but follows the ridge line among stunted conifers, which are a testament to the brutal conditions this area sees throughout the winter. With the smaller trees and the trail along the ridge line we can now see into the basins on the north side of the mountian and to the south we can see South Sister and the giant valley between the two. At one point as we paused to take a break Jason asked if that was the freeway we could hear down below us, after we hiked a little further the raging stream between the two mountains came into view and we realized it was the source of the noise we heard.
Soon this hike transforms into a 2000′ scramble. The good news is that the rock is a very grippy dunite and easily scaled. The bad news, the route is not always well marked.
In all honesty the scrambling part of this was really, really fun. A little sketchy in spots but the rock is really grippy and footholds and handholds were plentiful and good.
We continued to scramble our way up until we were at around 5,300′ in elevation. By this point we had been going for about three and a half hours, and had gained about 4,000 ft in elevation. We took a break in a nook on the side of the mountain and decided that it was time for us to head down.
We soaked in the view for a while and then began our descent. It was slow going down climbing the scramble but was wasn’t as intimidating as it seemed it would be. We took some time to take in the scenery, watching another pair of climbers advance up the ridge, some eagles soaring along looking for food, and a gyrfalcon.
We soon found out the reward for pedaling and pushing those bikes uphill earlier in the morning as we ripped down the mountain. That last 2 miles that had seemed so hard to push up was a hoot, every where the path crossed a stream there was a little jump (which is kind of awkward with a pack and an iceaxe on) but it was fun. The bridge that was frozen over in the morning was still frozen but we just blew right over it anyway and probably within 20 minutes of having reached the bikes we were back at the car, already thinking about the next trip up.