Trip Report

With a great group of 6 once all of the dust settled and we ended up with who was actually going on the trip, we set off from Springfield to meet Ben Pellegrom from Corvallis up at the trail head. With participants Danni Harris, Sarah Kyllo, Kerry Edinger, Sam Westerfield, and myself, we set off on a trip that was exciting with a little wind in the parking lot at 3:40 am. As we hiked in the dark for about 2 hours we hit the climbers trail and headed up the climbers trail to the ridge line and up to the top.
Our two hour hike made for some great conversation as we took our breakfast break at the normal rock place that messes with compasses and watch the sun rise and got some great pictures. As we got closer to the climbers trail it became evident to me that this might be a bad day to climb the mountain. We got to places on the trail that would allow you to see the summit and it was covered in clouds. The wind was still not much more than 15 mph so canceling was still not on my mind. As we finished our break and headed up the climbers trail the wind started to pick up a bit which is where the questions started to mount. As I conferred with my backup who happens to be someone (my wife Danni) whose opinion I really value, we agreed that we would attempt to get to the crawl and make the decision to push on at that point. We got to the beginning of the ridge line and popped out to a really great view of the valley below and across the mountains towards central Oregon with minimal clouds but the peak was still covered in clouds and the wind was now picking up with intensity. We followed the ridge till we got to the old tree to climb thru to pop out on the rock scramble and we had a person strain a muscle in her back. Once we all got regrouped and settled we decided the wind was just going to be too much with the muscle strain to continue on. We divided up her gear and started the walk out. She made it with the help of some over-the-counter pain aids. As we got to the parking lot and made sure everyone was going be safe driving, another group we had passed made the same decision not summit due to the high winds. Sad to say no summit of 3 Fingered Jack this year. We will be back next year and try again.