May 21, 2004, Mt. Adams

As a rookie to turns w/ out a chairlift, our group set out to Mt. Adams with high hopes, lots of maps, WAY too much gear, avalanche beacons, and full flasks for good measure.  The road up to the South route to Mt. Adams is as nice as dirt roads get.  Traveling in a huge late model 4x4 we churned over snowdrifts like speed bumps.  As we cautiously approached a rather large drift... I yelled from the back of the rig "GO FOR IT DUDE!" He hit it... and high centered the truck on the snow.  No one said anything, as I believe we all thought we could make it.  We had to jack up all four tires one at a time and place rocks, branches, anything under the wheels to back out.  Needless to say it pushed back our departure from the parking area by an hour.  As a snowboarder I climbed in boots the whole way.  Two guys in our party put on skies on the road (during a longer snow stretch) and headed up.  The snow is melting rapidly on the road and there are many spots where it is gear on, gear off.  At some point they became sick of doing this... as they had rental gear and made do with what was thrown at them and tried to stay off the rocks.  We camped only at 5,500'.  The sun was out and the snow was killer.  However, hanging at 5,000' out to the horizon was nothing but grey and black clouds.  Nighttime was a fiasco as three of us were in a 4 man tent and one of the guys rolled onto his H20 bladder and it burst.  He was kind enough to wake me up and advise me to keep my feet out of the low end of the tent.  Fortunately for us the solo guy in the two man tent ate something bad... and was in and out of his tent all night.  Nothing you can really bag...other than paper, if you know what I mean.  While all this was going on we were getting hit pretty hard by the snow and weather.  We strategically camped in an enclosed grotto and it was still nasty.  Nobody had to say anything, we all just slept in.  At 10am we decided to go up as far as plausible for a good ski.  As we left camp we saw some climbers coming down, they advised the weather just gets worse as the elevation increases and decided to call it a day.  So we headed up and called it good only at 7,500, this is where the tree line ends and the visibility between snow, air, and terrain become blurred in weather like that.  The snow on the way down was KILLER!  It was fluffy where we started and slowly became our ever familiar and loveable NW concrete. As a boarder I literally and figuratively dig that stuff.  We skied/boarded down to camp and hooked up with a snowmobile trail that was more direct (steeper) than the road for a descent.  The weather was actually rather pleasant at the car.  As we loading up our stuff and were getting ready to leave... some yahoos in a jeep came flying by us and got stuck in our exact spot.
I said to my buddies... "Let's get the hell out of here before they ask for help!"
Hopefully I'll get another chance at Adams this summer!