April 25, 2004, Van Trump park, MRNP

Left at 11am am from the parking lot. From the parking lot, it didn't look like we would have much snow on this south face. A sign said that the bridge a quarter mile up the trail had been washed out and that crossing was not possible. We still went and found an easy crossing just a few hundred yards above the washed out bridge. We carried the skis up to 5000 feet past two waterfalls, luckily there were some good tracks as the trail is on a steep slope just above the creek. We crossed the creek again around 4500 feet near the first waterfall on a snow bridge that is not going to be there for much longer....once it melts out things may get interrresting :-) (probably need to go above the waterfall and not cross below?). Once we reached 5000 feet we put the skis on and shortly after made it to the lower sections of the Van Trump park. What an amazing place! The views on Rainier are amazing and the small valley is really nice  -all that far away from the Muir crowds. We went up to 7000 feet and then decided to make it a short day and let ourselves bake in the sun for a couple of hours. Nice views on the Fuhrer fingers route and camp hazard.
We saw one hiker and two skiers who had gone all the way up to camp hazard after having spent a night at around 6000 feet. The ski down was marginal, snow was really heavy...don't know what type of wax would have helped here....We skied all the way to 200 feet above the car...what more can you ask for :-) ?

Corinne coming skiing down in the Van Trump: