Middle Sister
— — the quiet one between her sisters.
Not only on a wall.
“Middle Sister is the middle peak of the Three Sisters, a 10,047-foot stratovolcano in the Oregon Cascades. She is the least climbed of the three, with no walk-up route and a glacier on every flank. Climbers start at Pole Creek and cross the Hayden Glacier to the north ridge. From the high lakes east of the range she reads as the smallest silhouette in the line, set back behind North Sister's pyramid and just left of South Sister's broader cone. — from the studio
Middle Sister, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Middle Sister rises to 10,047 feet in the Three Sisters Wilderness of the central Oregon Cascades, between North Sister and South Sister on the spine of the range. The peak is a stratovolcano built largely of basaltic andesite, with its last known eruption roughly 14,000 years ago, which puts it among the older of the three. The Hayden, Diller, Renfrew, and Collier glaciers wrap the upper mountain; Collier, on the saddle between Middle and North Sister, is the largest glacier in Oregon.
Of the three peaks, Middle Sister sees the fewest climbers. South Sister has a non-technical walk-up route on the south side and draws thousands a season; North Sister's rotten east ridge has a small loyal following. Middle Sister sits between them with a glacier on every side, so a summit attempt commits the climber to roped travel across the Hayden or the Collier and a moderate snow-and-rock ridge. The Three Sisters Wilderness, designated by Congress in 1964, holds the peak inside 286,708 acres of federally protected land.
The standard climbing window runs from mid-July, once the access road to Pole Creek and the upper snowfields have firmed up, through early September, before the first storms close the high traverse. From Sparks Lake, Scott Lake, and the meadows east of the range, the peak is best photographed on the still mornings of late summer when wildfire smoke has cleared and the Hayden Glacier still holds enough snow to read white from the valley floor. By late autumn the road closes and the mountain belongs to skiers.