June 17-18, 2004, Mt Adams N side

I had the good fortune of choosing between a couple of cool trip ideas, in the end I headed back to the N side of Adams with a couple of Canadians, Mike & Andy Traslin, that I had met doing the randonee races.  Mike & Andy were going to meet us 2 weeks ago when we were here last, but car troubles delayed them and they tried to salvage their trip on the South side but they were a day late and got stopped by the weather that came in.  It was really cool to ski with them and hear stories about the places they go up in BC, I'm definately going to have to check out some of their stashes sometime.

We drove in very late Wednesday night and camped at Killen Creek TH.  The parking lot was almost full as there was some kind of glacier training/climbing class going on.  I doubted that we would have time to summit on Thursday because we showed up so late (and thus needed to sleep late) but I knew we would be able to ski something.  We left the TH a bit before 9 and made it to our high camp at "the beach" around noon where we rested a bit and ate lunch.  A little late to go to the top, so I proposed that we ski the nice snowfield on the NW side of the N ridge that goes up to 10,300'.  I don't know if it has an official name but on the last trip Amar referred to it as "South America Glacier", and it makes some sense as it is shaped a lot like South America.  We skinned and then booted directly up the snow and enjoyed nice corn (maybe just a little past prime but still very nice) at around 3:30.  It was a much better run and better pitched than I thought, definately a worthy destination in its own right and a great option for people who want to enjoy the amazing location and scenery of the N side without commiting to one of the various N side steeps or glaciers.  2850' of descent right back to high camp with 2400' of it very nicely pitched for skiing was a nice afternoon treat indeed.  After a nice afternoon of eating and resting at camp we settled in early for a nice long night of sleep.

In the morning we woke up and climbed the N ridge.  While Andy & Mike went over to the summit I stopped on the Summit plateau to field-test my blue bag.  I didn't bother going all the way to the true summit.  We skied over to West Peak and stepped up on skis to the top.  We started down NFNWR and the conditions were less than ideal.  By that I mean semi-nasty icy satrstugi.  You could make a turn in it, but it wasn't what I call enjoyable.  We picked our way down a little ways staying more over by the NW ridge, as that way looked good from camp, but we got a little bit cliffed out and started looking at our options on the other side of the ridge.  After getting a good look later it seems we could have gone skiers right from there and then cut back to the left but the snow on that aspect was really crappy, super steep, and exposed.  I saw a possibility on the other side of the ridge so I sideslipped down a bit that way to get a better look.  From there it seemed like there was a way to downclimb a finger of snow through a smallish rockband to a snowfield below that would connect.  I got out my axe and stomped a platform to change over to crampons and told the other guys to do the same up on the ridge and climb down to me.  I got down to the rockband saw that it wasn't too tall, maybe 5-8 feet or so.  The snow on this aspect was softer and for a moment I thought  "I could just throw my pack down and jump, it's not too far".  I was telling Andy I might throw my pack down, but I'm glad I didn't because a minute later he accidentally dropped his when he was downclimbing a short section without it. When he reached  to lower it he grabbed it by the skis and the pack slipped out some how and went sailing down the slope with his poles still on it.  It just kept going, it slowed down to where it looked like it would stop, but then would roll over agin.  Doh!  Ok, no tossing of my pack I thought and finished the downclimb down to the snow.  There was a little snow overhang, but I was able to kick through it with my crampons and then get down without too much trouble.  Mike thought he could see Andy's pack way way down there, and luckily he did have his skis (there was a moment where Mike & I thought his skis were rolling down the snowfield as well).  Andy got down and clicked in first and started making turns down towards his pack with no poles.  I could see then that we were going to be rewarded for that downclimb as his turns were looking sweet, a half-inch of corn on a smooth base with no sloughage.  Originally when I first spied the line I thought we might have to stay higher on the ridge, but Andy's pack led us down the sweet corn slope to the entrance of an eminately skiable chute so we just cruised right down it.  At the bottom I just could not believe our fortune of going from the steep icy satsrugi to a 3500' continuous corn run!  Of course we had a ways to traverse to get back to camp, but the views coming around the NW ridge were amazing, totally cool to get a different angle on all that awesome terrain.  Skiing back to the car from camp there was a minute where it looked like we might suffer the same fate (bushwacking) that our party did 2 weeks ago but I pulled out the GPS and had thankfully marked the car, so we soon regained the trail and made it back around 8pm. The N side of Adams rules!