Home > Trip Reports > 11-16-08, Mt. Adams, South Spur

11-16-08, Mt. Adams, South Spur

11/16/08
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
11542
13
Posted by danhelmstadter on 11/16/08 1:47pm
I drove up the road to Cold Springs Friday night, but a tree lay blocking the road, there was a 4 X 4 track around - but I could not subject my 83 beater to the toil, so I returned the next night with a Christmas Tree Saw and a few pbrs, and cleared the tree from the road in a couple hours.

I caught glimpses of beautiful sunrise ripened clouds, and a pink Mt. Adams as I left the C.C. C.G. The trail was mostly free of snow until several hundred feet below Lunch Counter - the snow was springlike - having a thick M/F crust. Higher up the snow became icy windboard. The South Spur had good and smooth coverage, but it wasn't the pow I was expecting...

Upon reching Pikers Peak, I was very pleasantly surprised to meet the Hummel Brothers, sitting on the ice, partially sheltered from the gusty wind by various rime formations -  a most unexpected sight - they also had their skis, and we decided to continue to the summit. The summit hill was in very poor ski condition ( ice sustrugi + a narrow corridor of sustrugified windboard. Wind was blowing, but the air was not as cold as I had expected.

I was satisfied enough to have the narrow bumpy windboard for descent off the summit hill instead of the Hannis ice sustgui which was the dominant snow(ice) form. The South Spur was very smooth, icy to various degrees - but at least it was smooth, and had mostly straight forward falline. Below the face the sun had clouded over, and the already icy conditions became icier - after some elevation loss, the snow softened to near perfect corn, and we were able to ski down below lunch counter, (some 4000'? in total).

Clearing the road



Upper mountain



Chillin with the bros

Nicely done, Dan. Those rime formations/big rocks are mighty nice when it's windy but sunny. Glad you got it done!

Glad to see the requisite tree clearing supplies are available in Trout Lake! 

good work gang!

It was great meeting you up there Dan. I managed some fantastic photos, too. Thanks for hanging with us, it was fun! BTW, nice photo of us doing what we do best :)

Nice work, and great pics!

I adore this photo!



Glad to see you guys got out!

author=Pandora link=topic=11238.msg46407#msg46407 date=1226953951">
I adore this photo!





The Hummel's at the forefront of skiing yet again, "Synchronised ski mountaineering", it will be in the 2018 winter Olympics. I agree ,great photo.

Lots of photos from the day. Perhaps a few will come back to enjoy the 6 I can put up here.











Yep. Now I'm officially jealous and sad I didn't head down.

Beautiful pictures! Was there any snow in the SW chutes???

Look in my misc folder at the top 26 pics. You'll have to push the links since its the index page.

http://cascadecrusades.org/misc/small/

There are some pics of the route. The chutes looked all right. I'd want more snow to ski over the rocks back to the s route, but you could do it? Hopefully there will be better snow than we had. I know the pics don't show it well, but trust me the skiing wasn't great. I'd want better snow before I'd go back.

BTW, scotsman...funny  ;D That gave me a good laugh. 

I'll never grow tired of looking at your pics.  As always, nice job Jas!  Sure looks like winter conditions higher up on that thing.  Nice to see the Pineapple didn't reveal too much on the way up to the false summit!

author=Scotsman link=topic=11238.msg46416#msg46416 date=1226969234]
The Hummel's at the forefront of skiing yet again, "Synchronised ski mountaineering", it will be in the 2018 winter Olympics. I agree ,great photo.


I'd thought they looked more like walruses sunning themselves. Very cute walruses, of course.  ;)

The skiing may not have been great, but it looks like the trip was worth it just for the sunrise!

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11-16-08-mt-adams-south-spur
danhelmstadter
2008-11-16 21:47:38