June 14-15, 2008, Mt Rainier, Emmons Gl
6/14/08
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
1522
3
A party of eight of us made the long walk up to camp Schurman on Saturday. It is nice to walk to Glacier Basin in shoes! (it is even nicer to walk back to the car from Glacier Basin in shoes!!) It was a warm day on Saturday and the winds had died down at Schurman by the time we got there. Got going at 4:15 am on Sunday. Beautiful night and sunrise. Route is not straightforward at the moment. At 11,380 there is a wall of ice that is rounded on the left and at 11,560 the main trail goes straight, but ends in a jungle of seracs at 13,000 or so. We followed a less beaten, but wanded, path up to the right from 11,560 and this worked out really well. Not many open crevasses and route pretty straight. Bergschrund at 13,800 or so easily crossed head on. Nice to meet Hannah at the top who was happily heading for Fuhrer Thumb. The skiing off the top really sucked, it was hard sastrugi or wind scoured hard snow to about 11,500 where it softened enough to relax and have fun. Two guys in our party took scary falls on the hard snow so if you go, be careful, stay on your game. Pretty soft by the time we got to Interglacier, but good cruising slurpee turns on tired legs. Mount Rainier sure is a beautiful mountain.
Fun trip and good company. Always a bonus to tag the summit. The interglacier was excellent snow and the slog out was not quite as bad as I remembered even with the trail damage from the last couple of years.
Altasnob has some good shots of the route and us setting up at Camp Shurman on his reply to the Andyski report from Saturday.
Altasnob has some good shots of the route and us setting up at Camp Shurman on his reply to the Andyski report from Saturday.
We were on top of Steamboat Prow and a little past noon watched 3 skiers descend. Perhaps one of the three dots visible near the climbing trail is you skiing down...
And by 'walk-back' Oyvind means 'jog with a seemingly hefty back-pack'. Not only did he pass us on the up, but blasted past us after our team of three (see pics above) on the way back to the car. Un/fortunately we decided to scrap summit plans and head down at slightly before noon. It seems that little altitude training, 3 hours of sleep at Sherman and no time to acclimatize don't help in preventing AMS :( At least we got to 13000+ feet! Next time we won't fall into that mistake. And yes, a Rainier is a majestic mountain and Sunday was beautiful .
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