Home > Trip Reports > November 14, 2009, Mt Rainer, Camp Muir

November 14, 2009, Mt Rainer, Camp Muir

11/14/09
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
5931
7
Posted by icmtns on 11/14/09 1:32pm
Start to finish the snow conditions on Rainier were great, except for the pebbles at pebble creek.  The rangers opened the gate at 10am and we started up the trek with a very large gathering of people, only to have most of the trek to ourselves possibly because of the pea soup that started below pan point, one minute crowd the next a white out...It made finding the pan couloir a little tricky.  We broke trail up to just shy of Muir due to the high clouds engulfing the mountain.  We were joined by 2 friendly folks for some of the skin up and another 2some followed up a little later.  The ski down was awesome, other then some vertigo in the pea soup once we hit pebble creek...made route finding a little tricky...  We got about 2 foot rooster tails on one of the slopes on Muir and the couloir was light powder and pretty deep snow.  We made it back to the car just before dark as some snow was starting to fall.  One of those days that the only thing to complain about was the soup, but then we got a very long untracked run and no crowds.  We observed an avalanche fracture line at the base of gib rock, other than that no other observances.
Thanks for the skin track.  I was the tele skier that said hi right at your turnaround point.  We  foolishly pushed on to muir, along with one other party.  We were rewarded with surprisingly good conditions higher up, but paid the price trying to navigate in pea soup down low after sunset.  Never thought I would be so happy to see tracked out powder which guided us back to the fairly dark parking lot.

Hopefully the couple we met at muir made it down without incident.

We sat in the parking lot and waited to make sure everyone came down...Two skier's appeared and got into the last car in the lot.  YAY!

Yay for you for waiting!

A full ten points and good karma for the rest of the season

btw, was there any fox poop laying about..?

Yes,  very good of you to wait for everyone's return.  We felt inefficient on the way down (my friend was on a splitboard and less inclined to walk over rocks than I was with my old skis), so were surprised to see a good number of cars in the lot when we returned to the parking lot at 5.  We weren't sure if the other couple made it down before us or not.  Did the Park Ranger stick around with you, too?  What time did the last skiers arrive?

They arrived somewhere between 5:15 and 5:30.  A ranger vehicle was parked in the lot.  (Glad the prediction for calm wind held....) 


No fox poo sightings.  Last year around the same time we saw a fox in the lot at dusk.   


Been plenty of foxes around from the silver/cross fox color phase to the red color phase.

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icmtns
2009-11-14 21:32:11