Three Sisters Hut to Hut: We finally spotted the mountains! ....sort of.

By dawn on the third day, we had our routine down. Matt stoked the stove as I brewed the coffee. Within no time, we were enjoying our final meal of our trip: potatoes and eggs. How come food tastes ten thousand times better on adventures like this? It's one of life's mysteries, I guess.

That mug made me giggle.

The howling wind that had kept the hut shaking all night had finally calmed. I pulled on my booties and headed outside to investigate. Much to my surprise, there was actually a view. For the first time on our trip, we could see the mountains...or a hint of them anyways.

Anxious to liberate Zoey from kitty prison, we built our last PB&J, then hit the trail. Compared to the previous two days, it wasn't snowing. It was almost enjoyable. Pleasant, even. Of course.

Judging by our map, it looked like our final ski day would be mostly downhill. Crisscrossing over a main snowmobile trail, we faced constant temptation to jump on that instead of breaking trail. The final day was through what we assumed as civilized in the summertime: a campground and a lake with cabins nearby.

Really beautiful burn area. It was like being in a black and white photo.

Eventually our route rejoined a nordic trail system. For me, this is always where I get lost. Too many trail choices, not enough identifying markers. I get lost on this sort of trail in the summertime and in the winter, apparently my mind does not discriminate by the season. Determined not to backtrack or lose our way, we spent a lot of time stopped, studying the map, studying the topography and then moving on for ten minutes before stopping again.

By my estimation we were two miles from the car and had a single sweeping downhill left. All trails were free of tracks....except one. Assuming this person had traveled from the snopark, we decided it most prudent to follow their tracks out. I finally let my guard down and cruised on down to the car in record time. The tracks dumped us out right where we wanted to be.

Mt. Washington from far far away.

It took us twenty minutes to dig out Ruby Sue, our intrepid Subaru. She scolded us for leaving her all alone in the snow, but we made quick work of removing the two feet of icy powder and she forgave us. She even brought us to Dairy Queen for a post-adventure treat!

Almost a mountain.

As we headed back into Bend to pick up Zoey, we spotted mountains in the rear view mirror. Of course, the best mountain photos I took were from the side of the highway. We're lucky like that.

That evening, we picked up Zoey from kitty prison and our family was reunited once again. Even though the weather wasn't good for viewing the mountains, it was quite the adventure and I would love to go back again!

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Whoops! That was me! hehe.

If you'd like to try your weather luck at this adventure, we booked this trip booked through Three Sisters Backcountry. These guys were aces. They warmed each of the huts before we got there, loaned us a GPS unit (that we never turned on), and checked on us when the weather was ugly. The cool thing about these huts is that they remove them each spring. They only exist in the winter, which means they're cleaned, well-maintained, and pretty awesome that they leave little footprint on the landscape. Since it was all-inclusive (even the shuttle van), it was a pretty good deal for a three day trip.

Note: We did not receive compensation for anything on this trip.