Hiking South Sister in Central Oregon

This was one of the most amazing mountain top experiences I think I have had. There were THOUSANDS of butterflies flying around us for hours. I have never seen such a thing!

Mix that with being at the top of a beautiful mountain, after hours and hours of hiking in the sun…it was amazing.

The South Sister hike is a challenging 11- to 12-mile round-trip trek near Bend, Oregon, requiring a 4,700-5,000+ foot elevation gain to reach the 10,358-foot summit. I hiked with Lu and Shantell, of Dropgym, who are very strong, fun and inspiring women!

Google said it was dog-friendly, but was definitely not ideal at the top for a dog. Kona was definitely a champ! This was almost 9 years ago.

I remember about 6 or so hours in, I was hot, tired and hungry. All I saw was dirt and looking around thinking at the trees I was walking through, I thought, "this isn't that pretty, why are we doing this". As we reached the top portion - which was steep, volcanic scree, directly in the sun, etc. I stopped and turned around. I've never had this happen but it literally took my breath away (granted I probably didn't have very much at the moment) I started to cry... it was so beautiful. But it was making me emotional thinking back to how I was feeling early and what i was experiencing now. I couldn't see how things were going to look and be, except seeing the dirt. I was overcome with the idea of even though the moment didn't look worth it, just like sometimes life sucks and is painful and doesn't seem to be going in the way you want, life really is worth it and it can be really beautiful when you look back - like I did on this hike - and see the beauty from the difficult hike…. sometimes the difficult parts of our lives can feel like the dirt I was looking at - “is it worth it” and it can feel like we might be there forever.
I don’t even know if I can put the feelings into words, but it was what I really needed in that moment. Again, this was almost 9 years ago.

It is somewhat therapeutic to look back, and see with more mature and compassionate eyes, with more understanding of what I might have been feeling and going through during that time. I am grateful I had met these two friends earlier that year. We stayed with Lu and Shantell while we worked on our film in March, this was in July. They were actively pursuing growth and were people I wanted to be around!

We were camping at a lake nearby South Sister for a couple days, and I joined them on this hike. I am so glad that I did.

They run a gym and a lot of bootcamp in Oregon, that I have attended and will share about later. They have continued to inspire and encourage me, push and challenge me, and for that I am so grateful.

Most of my personal videos over the past 10 years have been somewhat lost across different harddrives of photos and videos for work/the film.

To the part of myself that I am taking some time to go through some videos and reflect.

• Sadie :)