12/9/08- Almost Anvil rock,Paradise glacier margin
12/9/08
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
2525
1
Joe Bell and I decided to form an alliance and go for a charge up the snowfield as far as ambition and weather would allow... we ended up just a few hundred feet below Anvil. We encountered all forms of snow and ice combinations on the way up and managed to skin from the parking lot. Nasty rain crust forming on almost all aspects. We saw lowering freezing levels than initially forecast and thought that the higher the better- not the case! Skinned, booted, slipped up and up... The trail up was a bit hard to follow with drifts, etc, but we were more concerned by the trap crust that existed in most places. Skinning was interesting as a few slips made us all the more cautious. Switching between booting, and skinning we made our way up into the unknown.We managed to gather more energy after having had a short bivy break behind some rocks in a trench Joe happily dug for us. The forecasted rain started to fall, winds picked up, and vis was pretty much nonexistent the whole way up... until we broke above the cloud top to Joe's cries of excitement at 8,500 feet!
Having found the time getting a bit late to continue all the way up to Muir, we decided to cut our losses and enjoy the wind transported semi crusty layer along the Paradise glacier's margin. We gained a few hundred more feet then descended a bit below anvil. We tried to stay close to the rock bands (little africa, moon rocks), but were enticed by the better snow and fall line a bit too far out onto the glacier. Having a GPS is key in situations where vis is limited, and we followed my waypoint out to an escape route before the paradise gets too crevassed. On our traverse over to pt 7,250 we passed by a few crevasses that had not completely filled in yet which made us hasten our escape. Trying to not ski too parallel to the crevasses, we made it over and down onto the lower muir snowfield without much delay.
A few carries down to more continuous snow had us on the trail and down to the car just before sundown. The beggar fox greeted us with faces sure to melt the most hardened souls...
a few pics
Having found the time getting a bit late to continue all the way up to Muir, we decided to cut our losses and enjoy the wind transported semi crusty layer along the Paradise glacier's margin. We gained a few hundred more feet then descended a bit below anvil. We tried to stay close to the rock bands (little africa, moon rocks), but were enticed by the better snow and fall line a bit too far out onto the glacier. Having a GPS is key in situations where vis is limited, and we followed my waypoint out to an escape route before the paradise gets too crevassed. On our traverse over to pt 7,250 we passed by a few crevasses that had not completely filled in yet which made us hasten our escape. Trying to not ski too parallel to the crevasses, we made it over and down onto the lower muir snowfield without much delay.
A few carries down to more continuous snow had us on the trail and down to the car just before sundown. The beggar fox greeted us with faces sure to melt the most hardened souls...
a few pics
