South Sister Mountain Ascent (3,157 m - 10,358 ft)

Our camping location for the night.

South Sister

Middle and North Sister from the South Sister Peak

Middle and North Sisters zoomed

Moraine Lake as seen from the South Sister peak

On Suunto Ambit2 - Comparison with an Altitude Post

After using my good old Sony GPS-CS3KA for more than 5 years mainly for the GPS track logs and photo-tagging, I finally upgraded to a more functional gadget, namely the Suunto Ambit2. While I wanted to keep the GPS logging alive, I also wanted to learn and record about my heart rate during long hikes (or any other sports) as well as immediate altitude and temperature info. After a little bit of research online, all fingers pointed to Suunto Ambit2 for increased functionality and exceptional battery life for extended adventures. Hence I decided to buy one and did so recently.

So far, I was able to use Ambit2 in several hikes (including our hike to the top of Mt. St. Helens) and bike rides and I can definitely say that GPS logs rendered by Ambit2 are much smoother than those of the Sony GPS-CS3KA. I plan to prepare a comparative post on the GPS log performances but for now I just have the following photo where I hold the Ambit2 next to the altitude post at the peak of King's Mountain in the Tillamook region of Oregon. Note that the post reads 3226 feet which is equal to 983.2 meters making it 5 meters off from the Ambit2's reading of 988 m (in other words Ambit2 reads 3241 ft whereas the post states 3226 feet). I cannot verify the accuracy of the post but 5 meter difference should be okay.

Edit: Approximately one month later, we were in the summit again and I had the chance to record the summit moments with a GoPro.

Mount St. Helens Hike (~8287 ft)

Mount St. Helens Hike

This was my second attempt to hike up to the Mount St. Helen's peak which is at 2526 m (8287 ft). Almost exactly 1 year after the first ascent, this time our group was only 3 people which was a big reduction compared to last year's 8 people. Similar to our group, the parking lot at Marble Snow Park also had much less cars/campers compared to last year. For the record, the starting altitude was 886 m, so roughly 1500 m was ahead of us.

Being a smaller group, we were faster to pack and start the hike in the morning. It was 6.40 am when we were in the trail. After two hours clouds started to come over the St. Helens but later on they were completely gone. It took almost 6 hours to reach the top, the view was gorgeous. The smoke from the volcano was on. The view of Mount Rainier and Mount Adams was great. Here are some snapshots from the top: