Home > Trip Reports > June 5, 2010, Mt Freemont via Grand Park

June 5, 2010, Mt Freemont via Grand Park

6/5/10
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Posted by Boot on 6/6/10 8:47am
Couldn't have been a more beautiful day for a long tour combined with a great climb and 2000' ride off a summit.  Rd 73 is melted out to 4400' which puts you just a 1/2 mile from the fee-less "Eleanor Creek Park Entrance".  There was one small, <100' drop off the south side of the east ridge coming off Scarface that was dirt, then good skinning all the way to/through GP.  Original destination was Skyscraper Mtn, but the views and lines off Freemont were too irresistible.  The open scree slopes off GP down into Cold Basin were also dry and required a short ~300' hike.  Very fun skinning up Cold Basin and about 1/4 of the way up the large NW ave swath, booted to the ridge ~6400', and then was able to skin all the way to the Lookout at 7181'.  Views fantastic and saw tracks on Interglacier.  The ride down was perfect butter the entire way to the bottom ;D.  Some hiking and skinning on the way out, but was able to ride much more of it than I expected.  The Sunrise area should still hold pretty solid snow pack by the expected "LAME end of June road opening" (with it's SE exposure I would bet the majority of the road is already melted off, but "it is what it is", right?).
Wow. Beautiful terrain.

What do you know, I was just thinking yesterday that I have not read of any interesting adventures from Boot.
This approach to Mt Freakmont had been on my mind, but three weeks ago there was still snow down by Huckleberry.
Good job! Looked like a sizable slide up there in your 1st picture of Freemont. That's quite a walk to get there. You must have put on some mileage.

Hey Joe, 

Been too busy to put up TR's, but thought people waiting/hoping for Sunrise to open would like to see what things were looking like.  Did do another big trip from Cayuse over Governors to Tamanos on one of the few warm sunny days in mid May.  A great trip to keep in mind for early Cayuse opening with good snowpack.

No recent avies on Fremont; were you referring to the old NW swath that I ascended and rode?  Did see one slab on Burroughs that looks to have been started by a cornice fall.

Nice work Boot! Coverage looks really good this year.

Way to time it. That's a great tour. I was just wondering about that route when I was going up to Chinook Pass.
What were you skiing on for such a long low-slope tour and then turns?  I've used skinny fish scale metal edge xc skis for the tour, not so great for the turns.

p.s., Mt Rainier Volunteers blog has a notice that they are looking for volunteers to shovel out the Sunrise visitors center etc, and mentions skiing afterwards to "test the snow conditions".

Don_B,

I was on my split board and it went very well.  My friend on skies sat it out at GP with blisters  :(.  Don't know if that's a problem with long approaches on skies or if his just aren't fitting right? 

Boot

Everytime I see that 3rd picture it reminds me of the time the roof at the lookout blew off in those sustained 100+ MPH winds and landed intact way down in the basin. Pretty amazing that it traveled that far without totally getting destroyed. Made in America  ;)

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june-5-2010-mt-freemont-via-grand-park
Boot
2010-06-06 15:47:19