June 17, 2010, Mt. Adams

Well I picked a mid-June climb date back in March when we had a light snowpack.  If you plan to ski only, you may not mind the extra 3+ miles of trail between Morrison Creek and Cold Springs, but you'll be doing a lot of intermittent walking and sloppy skinning through that section, in some cases up to 1/2 mile on dirt, and lots of 50' sections of snow as well as downed trees.  There is reliable snow cover above Cold Springs, and plenty of it.  As we had planned to summit, these conditions were not helpful.  Having returned, my recommendation is to budget at least two nights on the mountain if you want to summit.  Once above about 6,500', it's not bad at all...it just takes a long time and energy to get to that elevation.  It's just looking like one of those years where you can wait until August and still have some good skiing terrain above Cold Springs.  You may have to wait most of that time just to be able to drive to Cold Springs CG.  Not my most memorable outing in terms of getting where you want to go.