The Benedictine brewery at Mount Angel Abbey is pictured at the 10,358-foot summit of South Sister Mountain in Oregon on July 18, 2024. OSV News Photo/Courtesy of Brother Ambrose Stewart
That first summer, mountaineering Benedictine monks from Mount Angel Abbey packed backpacks with locally brewed beer and took advantage of a brief window of opportunity in the season to summit some of the Pacific Northwest's most famous peaks and tackle the high altitudes.
In the heart of Oregon's Willamette Valley, four monks whose monastery sits on a hilltop with commanding views of Mount Hood in the distance — Friars Ambrose Stewart, Gabriel Bruns, Brandon Contreras and Father Michael Schramm — spent part of their precious vacation enjoying the view, tasting the monastery's brew and even celebrating mass at the top of a stratovolcano.
On three separate trips with friends, family or other climbers, they summited Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens and South Sister, ascending to elevations of about 11,250 feet above sea level. They told OSV News that to reach the frigid summits, they sometimes had to dodge mosquitoes, navigate tricky rock formations, wade through shards of broken rock known as “scree” and cross slippery areas of snow and ice to safety.
Friends Summit Mount Hood
Brother Ambrose had hoped to summit Mount Hood with Benedictine Father Cyril Dolnijevic on the Feast of the Transfiguration in August 2023. Unfortunately, poor weather conditions forced them to abandon their plans.
Undaunted, Brother Ambrose spent the rest of the year training and waiting, and after a few sleepless hours in his car in the parking lot of Timberline Lodge at the base of Mount Hood, he and his friends Emily Brand and Seattle seminary student Jonathan Cheever set off in the pre-dawn hours of June 12 to ascend the 11,249-foot stratovolcano, guided only by the stars and headlamps.
“Not many people climb mountains in the middle of the night,” Brother Ambrose said. “We hiked to different places, took pictures, and looked at the stars as we went up. The longer we hiked, the quieter it got. As we got higher, the air got thinner, making it harder to talk and breathe, and we got tired.”
Ms. Brand’s family has long ties to Mount Angel Monastery and she sings in the Monastery Chamber Choir. As an experienced mountaineer, commercial airline pilot and veteran Air Force C17 cargo pilot, she brought valuable mountaineering experience to the team during the climb.
“On my international trip I climbed the Hindu Kush and Mount Kilimanjaro. I spent seven days on Mount Kilimanjaro – it was breathtakingly beautiful – and then I climbed the Himalayas in Nepal,” Brand said.
“As you climb a mountain, you experience your own personal sense of adventure and beauty. It's also been a great spiritual experience for me,” Brand points out. “When you see a mountain for the first time, it's special. And after you've climbed it, it becomes familiar. It's like, 'I know this mountain.'”
Brand explained that the summit isn't a particularly friendly place: “When you get to the top, it's exhilarating because you've overcome everything, but at the same time, it's miserable because it's cold and windy,” she said.
“You know when the mountain can kill you. Mountain climbing requires humility. Mountains are God's creations and cannot be conquered,” Brand added.
Cheever, who is studying to be a priest for the Seattle Archdiocese at Mount Angel Seminary, has been an outdoorsman all his life. “I grew up hiking, skiing, anything to do with the outdoors. I learned how to ski, and that's how I learned how to walk,” he said.
He's been in and out of seminary for the past 13 years, but one thing has remained constant: his passion for the outdoors.
“For me, this is a retreat, a place of meditation. I truly experience the presence of God,” Cheever said. “The beauty of creation is God's imprint, so when I see beauty, I see God. That's why I love being out in nature. It's a peaceful escape for me.”
The friends reached the summit of Mount Hood after more than five hours, taking a short break to rest and eat at a crater with foul-smelling sulfur vents known as the Devil's Kitchen before the final, gruelling climb to the freezing cold summit.
“As soon as we got to the top of the ridge, we could see the whole horizon,” Brother Ambrose said. “There were no clouds. It was a steep incline, so we had to be careful. It was a feeling of accomplishment when we got there.”
Once at the top of the volcano, they retrieved bottles of the monastery's Benedictine brew and posed for photos, but kept their visit short due to frigid temperatures and high winds.
“The summit is never a friendly atmosphere. It's exhilarating, you've overcome a lot of obstacles, you feel like you've accomplished your goal, but you're only half way there,” Brand explains. “The anxiety of coming down is greater than the anxiety of reaching the top. You just want to get back to the car and warm up. The descent always takes longer than you'd think.”
Thankfully, they found some ski trails on the way down and were able to ski down on their hips, using their ice axes as brakes. They made it safely back to the base of Mount Hood and enjoyed burgers and beer in a warm lodge.
“The joy of helping Brother Ambrose achieve a goal he's wanted for so long and being there with friends to share in it never gets old,” Cheever said. “Keeping your eyes on what's above and what's on top of that summit makes it all worth it.”
Father and son tackle Mount St. Helens
When Ed Bruns watched in horror as Mount St. Helens erupted in May 1980, he could never have imagined that he would one day ascend the reshaped peak with one of his sons, who had felt a calling to monastic life at Mount Angel Monastery.
Bruns, a father of six, had the opportunity to climb Mount St. Helens on July 1 with his 27-year-old son, Brother Gabriel, who is a monk at the monastery.
A Navy veteran and former Boy Scout leader from Vancouver, Washington, Brands is no stranger to outdoor adventures.
“I went hiking there before it erupted in 1980,” he said. “It was really amazing to climb. It looked like Mount Fuji. Now it looks totally different.”
As group leader, Brands realized many of the boys had never been on a hike, so he organized backpacking trips. He also took families on outdoor trips. “It was amazing to see their eyes open and marvel at nature and how it was clear that God created everything,” Brands said.
The trip with his father made such an impression on Brother Gabriel that he chose Mount St. Helens as his first serious climb, and when the opportunity finally came this summer, he wanted his dad to be his guide.
The Gabriel brothers said they started climbing together at 6:30 a.m. The weather was cool and they took only two or three breaks during their four-and-a-half-hour climb.
“It was beautiful the whole way up. There was no rain, just mist,” he said.
They climbed steadily through the forest, passing through patches of snow in the woods, encountering exposed rock fields between large slopes of snow, and finally reached the rim of the summit at an elevation of 8,363 feet.
“We stopped for lunch and looked out over the crater rim. We talked for a bit and sat and listened to the wind. We heard a 'tinkling' sound and then rocks falling quietly into the crater. It was a magical moment,” Brother Gabriel said.
“It was an amazing day,” Brands added. “We couldn't stand on the rim because there was a huge snow cornice over it that made it dangerous, but there was one spot where there was lava and you could see down. We took out our (Benedict) beers and plunged them into the snow. The whole crater was covered in mist, but we could still see Mt. Rainier.”
The pair enjoyed cold Benedict beers before the gruelling trek down the mountain.
“I always thought about how amazing it was to climb mountains together and that he took time off work to do so,” Brands said. “When he (Brother Gabriel) joined the monastery, I wasn't sure he would be able to do this kind of thing. It was a gift from God that we had that time together.”
Brother Gabriel agrees that they experienced a deeper connection with each other and with God's creation. “When you stand at the top, you get a different perspective. You see why mountains are important places in the Bible, like Mount Sinai where Moses received the stone tablets. In that moment, it's like seeing God face to face,” Brother Gabriel said.
Brother monks challenge South Sister
In a first for the monks of Mount Angel Abbey, Brothers Ambrose, Michael, Gabriel and Brandon set out on July 18 to summit South Sister Mountain, the state's third highest peak at 10,358 feet.
“This is my first time climbing a mountain with other monks,” Brother Ambrose said.
“For the past few years, we've scheduled a mandatory 'easy' hike for all the younger monks, and an optional 'hard' hike for the more athletic ones,” he says. “This year, we decided to step it up a notch and aim for the summit.”
South Sister is the tallest of the Three Sisters volcanoes, which also include North Sister and Middle Sister, in Oregon's High Cascade Range. The climb is steep, with an elevation gain of 4,900 feet over a rugged 5.5 mile trail.
“Weather-wise it was a beautiful day, a clear and crisp morning,” Father Michael said. “At first the mosquitoes were annoying, but then we got up in the trees and the views were amazing.”
While studying at Mount Angel Seminary to become a priest for the Archdiocese of Seattle, Father Michael would hike with fellow seminarians. He was ordained in 2008 and then felt a calling to religious life, entering the monastery in 2021.
“As monks, our whole life is prayer, and wherever we are, it's just part of the experience,” Father Michael explained, “We know that wherever we are, we are there by the grace of God.”
After about five hours of climbing, the monks reached the summit and celebrated their achievement by posing for photos surrounded by breathtaking views.
“We brought along a bottle of barrel-aged Dark Night beer for promotional purposes,” Brother Ambrose says, but he didn't drink it at the summit. Instead, he carried it back down the mountain and delivered it to the owners of Monkless Belgian Ales in Bend, Oregon, a newly opened establishment called The Abbey. “You could call this a 'holy sh*t moment,'” he jokes.
Their real celebration took place just below the peak: they celebrated a Votive Mass of the Holy Angel on a little rock ledge just below the peak, where the sun was shining and they were protected from the wind.
“It was a beautiful way to celebrate the achievement of reaching the summit, but even more than that it was a beautiful way to celebrate communion with God and with each other as brothers,” Father Michael said.
Brother Gabriel said this was his “first outdoor Mass.”
“When my father raised the host, it was aligned with the mountains to the north and it was breathtakingly beautiful,” he added.
Brother Brandon, originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, grew up in Salem, Oregon, and enjoyed hiking with his family. He recalled a moving passage from Father Michael's sermon at the summit that resonated with his own spiritual journey: “The joy and peace you feel at the summit is made all the sweeter by the pain of the climb.”
Brother Ambrose revealed that these “sister” mountains also share three theological virtues:
“As monks of Mount Angel, we stood at the top of 'Charity' (the South Sisters' ancient name) and, beyond the Eucharist and chalice held aloft during the consecration ceremony, we could see 'Faith' and 'Hope' (the other two Sisters) on the horizon with our old friend Mount Hood in the distance,” he recalled.
“All of this took place in a little cave on the top of the mountain, where the sunlight was shining in but we were completely protected from the wind,” he explained. “We felt that it was time to be there and rededicate the mountain to God and rededicate ourselves to the fundamental virtues of Christian life.”
He then quoted St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is love.”
SueAnn Howell writes for OSV News from North Carolina.
