June 15, 2008, Summerland to Cowlitz Chimneys traverse

This tour was heavy on the traversing, rather light on the turns, but it was still a fun trip with some cool views of Rainier and the Sarvant glacier/Cowlitz Chimneys area.  Becky, Nate, Kirsten, Anastasia, Marcus, Andy and I started from Fryingpan Creek TH, up through Summerland, past Panhandle Gap to Cowlitz Chimenys, over to Owyhigh Lakes and out via the northeast side of Tamanos/Owyhigh Lakes trail.

Easy travel to Summerland and on up to Panhandle Gap (lots of nice tracks all over Meany Crest from folks the day before).   From Panhandle we just started touring east along the high divide above the Sarvant glaciers.  The north facing snow wasn't all that consolidated from the previous week's storm, so we didn't opt for any yoyos onto the Sarvant glacier side of the divide.  There were a few spots along the way where access could be gained down to the Sarvant glaciers without a rappell/jump, but most of the chutes we saw were guarded with big cornices.   A few boulder tosses into the chutes showed the snow was rather sloppy and not worth the rappelling shinanigans needed to get in to them.

Shortly after lunch we arrived at the Cowlitz Chimneys...the snow coverage high along the ridge is going fast and we got within about ten feet of the col before de-skiing and scree-crawling.   The top of the big east couloir had an almost continuous cornice between 5ft to 10ft tall....the further south we went, the smaller the cornice was but the snow was rather icy in the shade of the Cowlitz Chimney.  Some opted for rapping the cornice and some opted for the no cornice but icy entrance but eventually we all got into the chute and continued the tour.

The couloir had puked all the new snow recently and there was a fair amount of debris to weave through.  The snow got better and cornier the further down we went.  There were a few moats and glide cracks starting to show along the fringes.

After skiing the couloir to the flats at 5400ft we booted up the divide between us and Kotsuck Cr. drainage (still all snow to gain the divide, but the top bit may melt out soon).  A few turns into Kotsuck basin and then some shuffling along using the one skin on, one skin off scoot brought us past Owyhigh Lakes and around the side of Tamanos until we saw signs of the trail. From there we skied the trail till we ran out of snow at about 4800ft. Changed back into trail runners and hiked the remaining mile or two down to the Owyhigh Lakes TH where we'd left a car that morning.

Traverse stats approx 12 miles, 5000vf.

edit- finally added some pics.


just beyond Panhandle Gap

rope or jump entrance to one of the Sarvant glacier chutes?

Sarvant Glacier from above


More traversing