May 19-21, 2004, Fuhrer Finger-Mt. Rainier

After completing Baker our next objective was to ski Glacier Peak (Adam-John now). Unfortunately we didnt find out that the road for the standard approach was washed out untill we were at that point.  After a few laughs and head shakes we 180ed and spent the night with unexpecting family on Camano Island.  The next morning, after learning of the first Liberty Ridge incident of the season, we aimed our sights on the crowning glory of our months of planning, the Fuhrer Finger.  The next morning, after a rainy adventure in camping at the park boundary, we made way for Paradise to see if weather reports were still giving us a window to depart the next day.  By 1pm of the 19th we had learned that our window was cut short by a day leaving us only an opportunity to summit tomorrow. So we decided to try and beat the weather and packed up and headed out in the fog by 2:30pm. I remember clearly asking myself around 3pm, engulfed in Maine-like fog at this point, What the Hell are we doing?- I don't like this- I don't like this at all!  The only thing that put my mind at ease was that we always knew exactly where we were due to the Camp Muir super highway and GPS.  To our surprise we came out of the fog at Glacier Vista entirely (6400').  Not one weather report or ranger mentioned anything about the inversion.  After a short traverse down onto the Nisqually we roped up and debated on the best route up to high camp at 9200'.  We chose a line, more or less, up the center of the Wilson glacier apposed to the steeper and now saturated slopes to the west (including the wilson gully).  Skinning was slippery in places and skis were removed on a couple occasions as we weaved our way up through the crevasses. By 9pm we were at camp at 9300' on the west flank of the Wison Glacier.  Awake at 4:30am we were happy to see the stable inversion below at the same elevation it was the day before and clear skies all the way up the rest of the mountain. By 5:30am we were underway with light packs (relatively) and begain the long front point up the finger.  At around the half way point up the finger, proper, rocks on two occasions wizzed past at their terminal velocity, enough power to easily explode a femur!  For this reason alone I would recommend roping up in the finger even though it is not glaciated, for an unconscious body here could easily turn into a dead one rapidly. Around 12000', now around 10:30am, we decided to finish the route on the upper Nisqually instead of continuing up and over unskiable shrunds on the standard furher route. Route finding through the many large crevasses on the upper Nisqually was straight forward, sticking more or less in the center of the glacier all the way to the columbia crest leaving Point Success to the west.  As we neared 14000' a summit cloud decided to take hold of the tip top of the mountain and ruin our chances of a summit view. At 2:30pm, very spent at this point, we clicked into our skis on the summit and started the decent.  Skiing over small patches of blue ice was interesting and the skiing improved to good and then mushy by high camp.  At the top of the finger we did some ski cuts but the sluffing had already mostly cycled from the last precip. and didnt build on itself to the point where it was unmanageable.  Back at camp at 3:30pm we listened to the weather and decided we could spend another night after all and did so to have more supportable snow for the rest of the decent.  The next morning we waited for the snow to soften to our liking and descended toward the inversion which had now risen another 1000' vert. to 8000'.  We decided to descend via the more westerly Wilson gully for better skiing.  This turned out to be an interesting venture for we had no GPS coordinates for this variation below the cloud line, and only map software to navigate into the gully and away from dead end cliffs.  Through perseverance we found the gully and a disoriented climbing party coming up it.  After exchanging some beta we joked to our selves, ''where are their skis? thats gunna suck booting down! haha''.  Unfortunately the lower Nisqually drainage had melted eliminating the possibility for the full 10400' vert. descent so we had to cross the Nisqually once more, gain the camp muir trail (about 300' vert.) and decend to paradise through the fog.  What next?  Adams naturally - we had only stared at it for two days straight!