12/5/09 Paradise Glacier and the Walk of Shame

ScottK and I were both itching to get some time out in the mountains and headed down to Rainier today to ski out towards and up onto the Paradise Glacier. Anticipating the snow might be marginal, the motto of the day was "It's all about the views today"

We went out via Mazama Ridge and Cowlitz Rocks. On the way to the base of the glacier we found patches of breakable crust alternating with areas of soft wind deposit. Once we started climbing up the glacier, we found either breakable crust, hard wind pack or ice. Finding it hard to get any purchase up high and having not brought ski crampons, we turned around at around at about 7700 feet and "skied" back down to the flat area below the glacier where we enjoyed some sun and did some beacon search practice.

The ski out was not very pleasant, particularly as we got down closer to Mazama Ridge as the light was flat and the amount of breakable crust had increased a lot since the morning. We finally figured that injuring ourselves trying to ski the heinous death crust wasn't worth it so we put the skis on our packs and did the Walk of Shame down to the road before skinning back to the cars.

The views in the morning were great... the skiing later in the day was not.