St. Helens Evening ascent - a.k.a. Skunked on Rainier by National Park Service

Aaron and I wanted to climb Rainier during the weather inversion in mid-February. Telemetry from NWAC revealed that it was almost balmy up at 10,000', and generally cold down low. We were inspired by a trip report from the climbing rangers practically exhorting all who climb to com and get it while the getting was good. Our plan was for a two-day ascent. This hopefully would work out well, as Christine and I were hosting company the next evening for the swearing in of the new president.

We met up at a very civilized hour and headed down to Rainier. I was super stoked. Since the Muir hut was open, and we were planning on the Gib Ledges route, we were going to head up super light - no ropes, no tents. Unfortunately, we got a major buzzkill from the rangers who informed us that, due to problems with the road being only open one way, they were not going to allow overnight camping up on the hill on a weekday (we were there on Monday morning). I was pretty pissed, especially after the ravings of the ranger blog saying how dope climbing conditions were at the moment.

So.... it was about 10am and we were all loaded up with no place to go. On top of that, I didn't really have time for us to modify our plans for anything longer due to social engagements. I casually suggested we could go down to St. Helens and do the walk-up, returning home way late in the evening. This way we could enjoy the weather inversion and at least get out in the hills. We didn't have any technical climbing equipment with us for other stuff in the area. Also, it didn't seem like it was that far south.....

Several hours and a couple of hundred miles later, we roll up towards St. Helens. The drive was f***ing long. On the road up to the Sno-Park, we saw an SUV precariously perched down a gully after sliding off the road (fortunately it was unoccupied!).

By the time we got all ready to go it was damn near 4pm. Tons of skiers passed us on their way out. We even got puzzled inquiries from other climbers/hikers. "You guys know it's gonna be dark soon, right? There's still a couple of thousand feet elevation." Thanks, folks! We know what we're doing, even if it seems silly.

We made pretty quick work of the approach. Snowshoes weren't necessary up higher; the snow was unbelievably firm! Darkness set in pretty quickly. We snapped a couple of pictures before losing the sun, however. Aaron is posing with a cool view of Adams in the background.

Once the sun went down, it was kinda hard to stay motivated to keep going. The way up was obvious, thank goodness. Aaron only brought one liter of water and was starting to feel the effects of dehydration once we neared the summit. He encouraged me to press on for the final couple of hundred feet. Fortunately, there wasn't a huge cornice overhanging the edge of the crater rim. I was hoping there might be some glow down in the caldera visible in the dark night, but no dice. The stars were out, however, and it was quite beautiful in its own way.

Going down went smoothly. It took a little concentration to make sure we got back to where we cached the snowshoes. Here is a picture of what the last 4 hours of the hike/climb looked like.

After enjoying my second big fast food meal of the day, we drove on back to Seattle late into the night. INXS helped power the drive home, and I was pretty beat. After getting my car at the park-n-ride, I tuned into NPR where there was already early morning coverage of election day on the east coast! 3:30am west coast time = 6:30am east coast time, so I guess that wasn't really a surprise. It was a fun day. Thanks for driving your car all over the state, Aaron!

January '09: Mt. Shuksan - White Salmon Glacier Ski Tour

Pete Hetrick and I linked up through cascadeclimbers.com. Since losing my job, I've been always looking for new partners who have a flexible schedule. Pete has some weekday availability, and we decided to head out for a 1 - day ski tour of the White Salmon glacier on Mt. Shuksan mid-January.

As in 1-day Seattle-to-Seattle. We meet up at the Ravenna Park & Ride at 1:30am, which seemed pretty reasonable at the time. The drive up went really quickly in the middle of the night. My drowsiness was kept at bay with a little help from the late night (or early morning?) Jack in the Box.

I'm not much of a skier, and I tried my best to let Pete know this so as not to get expectations up. The approach involved a couple of hours of skinning through the trees from the Baker ski resort. It was my first real ski tour this winter, and was tedious. We ended up crossing four or five gullies. Pete had no problem with this; I, on the other hand, had to get creative. This included unclipping skis, dropping them down into the gully, then Batman-ing down tree branches since I couldn't really ski down the steep gully walls.

Eventually we broke out of trees, and I was relieved. Now all we had to do was cross several large avalanche debris fields. The temps were stable and we weren't too concerned about anything coming down. Eventually we made our way up to the snow slopes below the White Salmon. We were treated to a nice sunrise on the peaks to the north.

After some discussion, Pete and I quickly began referring to the snow conditions this day as a 'death crust'. As in a very hard but breakable crust with unconsolidated powder underneath. My resort skiing skills would be worthless here!

The White Salmon was kinda steep and kinda icy, so we opted to mount the skis on the packs and boot up. Very quickly we decided that we wouldn't be skiing down given the icy conditions. Stashing the skis, we headed up anyway for a nice ascent. We figured we had time to top out on the glacier and head down in order to make it out by dark.

Eventually we saw some ski tracks higher up on the glacier. Someone had skied this bad boy a few days earlier. To make myself feel better, I conjectured that they got in on much better snow conditions (e.g. less icy and less crusty) than we encountered. Seems like it might have been the tracks of some local celebrities, given the date of our trip.

Up high it became thigh-deep postholing, and our progress slowed significantly. We turned back a few hundred feet from the top of the glacier. Eventually it was time to put the skis on. Pete looked like he was posing for pictures for an instructional guide to telemark skiing with his good form.

I, on the other hand, couldn't keep it upright long enough for Pete to even take a good picture of me moving. So just look at this image and trust that I made my way down in one piece.

Once down, it was back through the trees to the resort. We crossed the avy debris fields without incident and got back to the car for about a 10 hour day (plus about 6 hours of driving). It was a good time. Thanks for a good day, Pete!