Sholes Glacier August 1, 2009

We assembled at the relaxed hour of 7:30 at the Artist Point parking lot.  Telemon Bob had camped with Gabe and Tom, while Lee and I drove up the morning of.

It was a long walk because, guess what, it is pretty dry out there.  At about an hour's walk I pointed to the spot where we had started skiing in the middle of the prior August.  A while later we checked out the patch that had run 400' last September 30th, and now is cut into two patches.  The first respectable run, of about 750', comes down the SE side of Coleman Pinnacle itself.

Lee and I were ahead of the pack and, not knowing about the summer trail around to the left, we climbed up to the lookout point just SW of Coleman Pinnacle, where we gazed down upon the pitiful remnants of what the USGS shows as a much larger glacier, the contrast made more striking this year by the fact that there was nothing but glacier present, the long snow tongues that had yielded good runs last summer are gone.

From the top of the point we spotted Bob and Tom below, then Gabe arrived at the top so Lee, Gabe, and I skied down the glacier and cut left onto what Bob said was the September 05 patch, the only snow he had found that month to keep his streak alive.  More hoofing and we ended up in time for lunch at the top, or at least one top, of the Sholes.  There are several disconnected pinnacles which I guess comprise "The Portals" of which we went to the top of the first, and there are two more beyond.

The top of the Sholes was nice, the summer sun had melted out the sun cups so we could carve them with relative ease.  Then the passage to the bottom of the Sholes was not so easy, the first chute looked very crevassed and broken, the second had a moat across part of it, was steep, and probably was skiable, but we traversed hard skiers right and found a mellow way down to the bottom, a total run of about 850' from the top.

On the way out we went to the top of the Coleman Pinnacle run and made the most of it.  On Bob and Tom's advice from prior trips, we dropped packs at the trail half way down and then continued down the nice steep chute that was the most fun run of the day.

Tom and I milked a somewhat pitiful pair of patches on the near side of the trail hairpin to get somewhat closer to home and to get closer to 2500 vf on a long hiking day.  The hoof hoof hoof on out to the usual amused comments and questions.

Lee posted a link to some of his pictures on the partners thread, here it is.  Bob and Gabe took lots of pictures and hopefully will post a link.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=94965&id=583488359&l=f3bcd8b48a

Great seeing Bob, Tom, and Gabe again, and good to meet you Lee and welcome to TAY.