|
|
|
|
|
|
Turns All Year Trip Reports
(1) Viewing these pages constitutes your acceptance of the Terms of Use.
(2) Disclaimer: the accuracy of information here is unknown, use at your own risk.
(3) Trip Report monthly boards: only actual trip report starts a new thread.
(4) Keep it civil and constructive - that is the norm here. |
|
|
|
|
Author
|
Topic: 6/26/08, Mt. Rainier, Kautz Headwall (Read 2257 times)
|
danhelmstadter
Member
Offline
Posts: 313
WWW
|
Left around 2am from Paradise, somewhat pessimistic about the potential for success, as the lenticular that was raging the night before still had its gnarly grasp on the upper mountain, surely with a little sun it would evaporate.
The freeze occurring in the darkness was light, and I was punching through the thin crust in many areas on my way up the Wilson, and Turtle. (the Turtle had slabbed out on Tuesday, sketchy... WS-U-R2-D1-I...) I snacked on the upper Turtle, and to my surprise the lenticular diminished to wisps, surprising since Helens, Adams, Hood, and even Jefferson seemed to be sporting large lent caps. I made my way up the Kautz Glacier, to avoid heinous rockfall in the headwall, I got a good view of the route from the glacier, and memorized key entry points through the rockbands.
My steps from the other day going up the lower and mid Kautz were still there, but I put in steps on the upper part. Things were getting wet, I was wondering if it was too wet. Point Success was beautiful, and I could see that there indeed was cloud activity over on Liberty cap. I started down as soon as possible, and worked my way through to the tricky hard to find entrance to the headwall. Once found, I had to negotiate a very tricky, steep, and exposed rockband, which I barely managed to do with the sticks on.
The upper headwall was very nice, good snow, a little sluffy, great views. I made my way down to the tricky traverse area, finding poor quality (wet, petinententes, lanchy, steep, exposed) snow. I cut the slopes before switching back to ski them, mostly skiing the bed surface of the sluffs. Finding my way, I was faced with a tricky narrow section to exit the headwall. This section was only a few feet wide, pure water ice covered with pebbles, and to top that, it had a 15 foot thin wet icicle overhead, which must be passed directly underneath. I skiied my way across, quite exciting at times, especially when I collapsed a section of the rotten stalagmite formation...
The snow was surprisingly crappy once exiting the rockbands on the headwall, it was 1 to 1/2 foot pentinententes, some hard, some not, with many rocks in the cups. I survival skied down, and down, eventually finding excellent corn.
The traverse back to Paradise was good, a little wet. A marine layer made the ascent out of the Nisqually to pan point area nice and cool.
** I think the KHW is a awesome route, but not as direct or sustained steeps as dropping the upper k.g. to the WHW....
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
skierguitarist
Member
Offline
Posts: 292
|
Good on ya!!!!!!!!!!!!!
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
korup
Member
Offline
Posts: 320
|
Sweet! Thanks for reminding me: "I hate my job, I hate my job, I hate my job."
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thank you to our sponsors!
|
Contact turns-all-year.com
Turns All Year Trip Reports ©2001-2010 Turns All Year LLC. All Rights Reserved
The opinions expressed in posts are those of the poster and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Trip Reports administrators or Turns All Year LLC
|
Turns All Year Trip Reports | Powered by SMF 1.0.6.
© 2001-2005, Lewis Media. All Rights Reserved.
|
|
liberty_cap_getting_nailed.jpg
!
