6/14/08, Mt. Rainier, Fuhrer Thumb

It was about 9o'clock, and I was drinking and singing karaoke in Ashford when I sough Ryan, Monika, and Mike. I had plans to go skiing in the North Cascades, but meeting friends with ski plans close by, I could not resist going with them.
We set out about 4am from Paradise, and made good time up to the base of the Fuhrer Finger.

Rock fall was abundant, and as always really scary, there were the few slow bouncers, making there presence known by skimming sounds on the snow. There were the tumblers, tumbling down silently, and worst of all were the cruise missiles, flying by at a frightening speed, and making a sound as I would imagine a UFO would make.

At the top of the Finger around 11k, we met some Montanans, who had camped at the base of the Finger, and had turned around at 12k due to trail breaking difficulties and avalanche concerns. They skied down the Finger before the snow surface had the chance to soften.

I continued on up the snow covered Wopawety Cleaver to avoid crevasse issues, and Ryan, Mike, and Monika skied down from there. The cleaver had some 55dg sections, with funky variable snow. Past the cleaver, I continued up on the climbers right side of the upper Kautz, postholeing, and skinning meter+ deep powder, The upper glacier got really icy higher up, and I meandered a little over to climbers left in search of soft, deep snow, nothing, nothing but ice, and sections of windslab. The last 40' were excruciatingly slow. I topped out on Point Success, and decided against skiing the icy glacier I had ascended.

I skied down the upper Nisqually, then cut through seracs to a point about halfway down the upper Kautz, where I found nice powder (slightly crusted). Then skied down the Wapowety cleaver(all snow), steep and tricky in sections, to the Thumb. The Thumb was very soft, perhaps too soft...(pole deep isothermal mank) Someone videotaped me from the lower Wilson. I was experimenting with sticky pads on the front of my boot liners, but found that these mostly put me in the back seat, tore them off somewhere lower down. Still some excellent turns though, weaved through the crevasses, then down the rolls of the Wilson...

I was making nice sweeping turns down the Wilson, aware of a rollover ahead, which I planned on cutting... When it released without me cutting it, I was about 10' from the roll when it released, definitely remote triggered it, Massive wet slab, easily big enough to bury someone.. WS-AG-R4-D3-I... I skied down the bedsurface, amazed at the depth and extent of the debris, the crown was perhaps 6' deep at its deepest. Then skied down to the next roll, which had already slid... finding out from some campers at the bottom that my friends had triggered and been caught. Shaken, I returned to Paradise, setting off whumps along the way.

Definitely a little lucky on this one, slabs ain't no joke. Seems like a big wet cycle went on Saturday, I observed evidence of 30 or so natural slabs, all over the hill, a few days later.

Didn't bring my camera on this one.