Mt.Rainier, climb & ski of the Emmons glacier route

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Dulera, Asmanex, Singulair, Fluticasone, Albuterol...somehow, for some reason, my lungs over the past few years went from having a minor issue with exercise induced asthma, to being... well... damaged goods. I used to be able to knock off Rainier and if I forgot my inhaler...no big deal.  Nowadays, I feel like I'm carrying a small pharmacy in my first-aid kit. After experiencing some rather bad altitude sickness for the first time ever in Nepal this fall, I really wasn't sure what a Rainier climb was going to feel like.

I took a shot at the Fuhrer Finger route in March...conditions were beyond perfect, but I was feeling maxed out trying to keep up... so one of the climbers who wasn't feeling so hot and I skied down a couple hours short of the summit.

Since then, we've had plenty of nice weekends to play in the Cascades and Becky and I have skied a lot but conditions never seemed quite good enough for another Rainier attempt, at least when I had the free time.  Its been a monkey on my back to take another shot at it.

This weekend the upcoming heat wave meant the freezing level would be above the top of Rainier, but the forecasted 50mph wind on the summit meant there probably wasn't going to be soft snow up high. Ross was game for taking a shot at it, so Saturday morning we headed on down to Rainier.  We'd changed our previous climbing reservation a couple weeks back to the 29th and 30th so no problemo getting a camping permit at Camp Schurman for the night.

Saturday we put-putted our way up the trail into Glacier Basin, up the Inter Glacier, and over onto the Emmons Glacier.  Spent the rest of the afternoon melting snow, re-hydrating, and resting our legs.  There were maybe four parties of skiers and a dozen or so groups of climbers...the climbers would all be leaving around midnight, the skiers anywhere between 4am and 6am to catch softer snow in the afternoon up high.

Sunday morning dawned warm, calm, and clear...we loaded our packs, I took my assorted asthma meds and away we went. A slow and steady grind over the next 6 hours up a never-ending bootpack with the occasional crevasse to step over and we were nearing the top. We'd stop from time to time to let a descending party of climbers scoot by on the cattle path, and we'd grab some Gu packets and water.   The wind continued to get worse and as we climbed it went from t-shirt weather, to windbreakers, hats, then winter gloves and goretex.

I really wasn't sure about skiing the snow that we were passing by...the Emmons route isn't steep at all, but the wind was keeping things quite firm. About a thousand feet below the summit we saw the first group of skiers and snowboarders descending. The lead skier was going surprisingly fast given the conditions and just below us he crashed and started sliding. We later found out that both his bindings failed...the toe pieces ripped from his skis and left his skis without runaway leahes...which explains why his boards just kept skittering downhill and dropped into a crevasse below. He came to a stop...stood up, and began putting on his crampons and getting his ice axe out. His partners were transitioning from their skis and boards to crampons as we passed by...hopefully they were able to retrieve the skis.

As we neared the top, we ran into another group of skiers we'd met at Schurman the day before...they were skiing how I like to ski...nice and in control. Ross gave them a bit of advice about swinging out onto the Winthrop as he'd done last year to avoid the steepest bit of the upper Emmons where we'd seen that fellow take a spill.

Down jackets on and a quick scamper up to the crater rim and we'd made it! I was ready to get out of there.. my lungs were not happy with the thin air, but the Diamox I'd taken earlier kept the mountain sickness away.

The snow near the crater was reasonably soft, good enough to give it the ski descent a whirl, so crampons and rope were put away and we clicked in to our skis. A thousand feet of careful turns got us past the worst of it and we finally got to softening snow. We had one huge crevasse with a rolly-polly snowbridge that we couldn't easily ski across, so we roped up and belayed each other across it, then back on the skis for a long slide down to camp. Down jackets were stowed, then the windbreakers, then the wool hats. By the time we were on the last thousand feet to camp, we were back to t-shirts.

We melted a couple liters of water, packed up the overnight gear, and then slid out of camp towards the Inter glacier. Another few thousand feet of skiing and we were back in Glacier Basin...skis off, running shoes on and hiking the three miles back to the car.

 

Rainier- Summerland to Tamanos ski traverse via Cowlitz Chimneys

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write up by Becky-

Pete and I spent Saturday doing a delightful loop on Rainier up to Summerland, over Cowlitz Chimneys, and up and over Tamanos.

Left the Frying Pan Creek TH at 8:20 and started hiking up towards Summerland. The nice bridge across Frying Pan Creek is pretty trashed so we had to head quite a way upstream to find a suitable crossing. The crossing was suitable. The thinning snow along the edges was not. One fully submerged and drained ski boot later, we got back on our skis and continued on our way. After we left Summerland, we didn't see anyone else the rest of the day. The long gentle traverse east towards Cowlitz Chimneys held enough snow to just barely squeak through on skins. When we'd skied this traverse back in 2008, the last slope to the Chimneys was bare and we had to scramble up a slope of surprisingly compact scree/rubble...fortunately this time we had a tiny little patch of continuous snow that let us ski right up to the top of the saddle. The entrance to the Cowlitz Chimneys run was predictably blocked by big, saggy cornices, but luckily, up slope on the saddle, we were able to find a non-corniced spot to slide in. We'd carried a rope back in 2008 to rappel the cornice but didn't carry one this time, so we were happy to find a non-jump entrance, or an obstacle big enough that would force us to head back the way we came.  The snow was a little mushy and very bumpy from all the cornice-fall, but if you stuck to the margins on skiers left, it skied pretty well.

We skied and booted up continuous snow out of Needle Creek drainage and over towards Owyhigh Lake. We skirted around the bowl in Kotsuck Creek drainage and tried to retain as much vert as possible to assist us with our climb up Tamanos. The entrance to the main chute on the north side of Tamanos looked good, but we couldn’t see past a constriction about 100 feet downslope so we hemmed and hawed for quite a while about whether to go for it. Pete finally decided to slide in for a closer look and was pleased to discover continuous snow all the way down. There are two main constrictions and they are getting narrower, but it should be skiable for a little bit longer. With the exception of some rocks peppering the slope, that chute had the best snow of the day!

We veered right out the bottom of the chute and were able to slide and side step our way straight to the Owyhigh Lake trail where we racked the skis and boots and hiked the remaining few miles back to the road, emerging at 6:20. The trail we came out on put us about .6 miles from our car so Pete graciously offered to jog back to get it while I lounged on a rock, reflecting on a great day.

Finally up to the North Cascades Hwy for some skiing

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This spring has been a bit of a bust so far.... a few failed trips, a couple colds between Becky and me, and some weekends spent doing homework for various continuing education requirements and we pretty much wrote off the month of April.
Seeing that Saturday's forecast looked decent, and that it would be followed by a week of wet, cool weather in the Cascades we wanted to get out and ski something....anything...just so long as it wasn't skinning/skiing laps at a closed ski resort for a few hours of exercise (like we'd done the past couple weekends).
We barreled out of town Friday night and were snoozing in the back of the Subaru at Rainy Pass by midnight.  Up at 5am and heading towards Lake Ann by 6am, we figured we'd go check out Black Peak.  I don't think there'd been freezing temperatures at pass elevations for a couple weeks, so the snow was soft from the get-go...made for easy skinning but we wondered what the snow would be like once the sun peeked out from the clouds.
By late morning we'd done the two mile traverse from Heather Pass to Wing Lake and started climbing towards the south col. Skis on the backpacks and helmets and axes out at the col, the south chute that I'd booted up before unfortunately had a couple melted out spots, so we climbed a chute off the left that looked like continuous ski from up high.  It was reasonable calf-knee deep post holing up the slope with the occasional melted out hole that we'd find when we'd drop waist deep into the snow.
We reached the top of the continuous snow, about 200 vertical feet from the top, around noon.   Not wanting to stumble across the summit ridge to the top in our ski boots, and not wanting to delay out descent any further, we called it a day there....a few quick pictures of Goode, Logan, and the rest of the North Cascades panorama to our south and then it was time to go.   The snow was sloppy but a bed surface of perfectly skiable snow was only a foot or two below the glop.  We'd just traverse the slope, ski cut off all the loose snow and let it rumble downhill, then ski the firmer snow underneath.  
From the south col back to Heather Pass, it was herky-jerky moisture saturated snow...not particularly good skiing, but hey it was a sunny day in the North Cascades and the quality of skiing came a distance second to just being out.
We made quick work of the short climb from Lewis Lake back up to Heather Pass and then had a pretty quick descending traverse back around to Rainy Pass and the car.
As usual for any North Cascades trip, we finished the day in Marblemount at 'Good Food' eating burgers in the sunshine....I think Becky enjoyed that almost as much as the ski tour.

 

busy weekend... Alpental to Granite Mtn traverse

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Alpental to Granite traverse-
Becky and I had plans to do the traverse from Snoqualmie Pass to Granite Mtn a few days ago when Saturday's forecast looked a bit sunnier, but we figured we might as well give it a go today despite the less than sunny weather.

One of these days we'll try the traverse with Kaleetan Peak thrown in, but we figured the extra 1600 vertical feet to get it would make the day long enough we'd be getting out after dark, so we opted for a slightly tamer route.  From Alpental we skied over Bryant Col, down to Melakwa Lakes and then followed the Pratt River to about 3500ft.  From there we climbed a divide and descended to Tuscohatchie Lake and began a long, mellow climb towards Granite Peak.

Visibility on the top of Granite was awful, but we had a gps track to follow and snow conditions were quite safe...so we gingerly skied down the south side in mostly whiteout conditions and then began to find much nicer snow and better viz once back in the trees.  Eventually the open space between the trees changed to slide alder between the trees and the snowpack got thin enough that we racked our skis and hiked the remaining bit to the car via the hiking trail.

Fun tour, a good adventure...hopefully next time we'll have some views.  

Mt.Rainier, Nisqually chutes

We'd rather be skiing powder this time of year, but its hard to complain about a stable snowpack, a 9,000ft freezing level and sunny weather up on Mt.Rainier.  Becky and I toured up to Camp Muir and skied some rather variable snow down the first 1500ft to the entrance to the Nisqually chutes. As we hoped, the snow had softened nicely and made for fun turns back to a very crowded Paradise parking lot.

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good skiing, bad skiing, and general silliness....

Cold, calm weather, a stable snowpack, and even a day of sunshine in the mountains....it was a great weekend to get in some touring up at Snoqualmie Pass.  

Ross, Mike, Becky, and I headed up to Kendall Peak on Saturday morning, got in two runs on the upper southwest slopes and one long run down the north side.  The slog back up the north side was a little tiresome, especially the final bootpack back up to the ridge...skiing knee-deep powder is fun, swimming back uphill through it...not so much.  

Sunday, Becky and I headed back up....we were pooped from Saturday's 5000ft of climbing, but the weather was too nice not to get back out.  We didn't have any particular desintation in mind, so we just toodled up towards Chair Peak figuring we'd ski the north slope and go from there.   Unforunately the wind must've really come cranking through there recently because the 2ft of stable powder we'd had on Kendall wasn't anywhere to be found.  We skied from the upper notch on a mixed bag of variable wind crusts and then we poked around above the Snow Lake cliffs till we found the entrance to a fun little chute we hadn't skied before.   Great chute, steep turns, but more wind damaged snow.   Once at Snow Lake we just climbed back up to the divide and made quick work of the slide back to Alpental. Short day, not particularly great snow, but finally having a day in the sun was well worth the drive.

Back home, we had enough daylight and dry weather to take our backpacks out into the yard for a 'test firing' of our airbags.  We picked up ABS avalanche airbags this season and hadn't pulled the ripcord yet to see just what they'd do....hopefully we never have to use these things for real.  Kind of a funny thing though to have a massive balloon appear over your head in just a few seconds!

powder! climbing for turns at Alpental

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The lifts weren't running yet at Alpental, so Marcus, Anastasia, Andy, Mica, their two doggies and I headed for Snoqualmie Pass to tour for our turns before the resort was open.   Pretty darn good coverage for early season and the snow was great!