May 20, Cascadian
5/15/11
5455
8
Wasn't planning on stuart but the conditions and the weather were to strong of a pull not to try. Left the car around 10am and got to the top somewhere around 4. Was able to skin the entire cascadian to the false summit. Very nice..smooth..consolidated snow the entire run. No need for crampons or an axe this day. Should be good for another week or so. Mainly wanted to give a shout out to the guys camped at longs pass who offered up a pull of whiskey at the end of the day...thanks.
COOL!
Nice! How close can you get a car to the Esmerelda TH???
We were the whiskey guys - glad you enjoyed it. I think we may have enjoyed it too much on Friday, but we still ended up getting up to about 8500 ft on Stuart just before it socked in and we decided to head down. Skiing was still good, although a little sluffy. We woke up to rain, but it clear out and didn't start again until our hike back up to longs. There were a bunch of parties out on saturday, two skied ulrichs and the rest came down the cascadian.
The road melted quite a bit in one day. You could drive to camp wahoo on friday, on saturday you could to about a half mile further. I don't see the debris blocking the road melting out any time soon.
I'm just glad we made it through the rapture.
The road melted quite a bit in one day. You could drive to camp wahoo on friday, on saturday you could to about a half mile further. I don't see the debris blocking the road melting out any time soon.
I'm just glad we made it through the rapture.
Sounds like you had better conditions than we did on Saturday. Mostly overcast with intermittent rain/snow, and quite hard snow above 8k. I was in the group of 7 that came up to Long's in the evening right as you were descending.
The few of us with crampons made it to false summit, but no way would it happen without them. We decided to pass on the true summit given the conditions and lack of ice axes. Nice descent down the Cascadian around noon, but the snow became quite unstable towards the bottom, leading to a scare near the big rock/cliff.
The few of us with crampons made it to false summit, but no way would it happen without them. We decided to pass on the true summit given the conditions and lack of ice axes. Nice descent down the Cascadian around noon, but the snow became quite unstable towards the bottom, leading to a scare near the big rock/cliff.
author=mick_scott link=topic=20911.msg89286#msg89286 date=1306049063]
Nice! How close can you get a car to the Esmerelda TH???
Snow free about 2 miles from the TH. With a high clearance vehicle, we got within 1.5 mi. There's a good sized slide 1(ish) mile out that will take quite awhile to melt, but I imagine you will be able to drive up until the slide pretty soon.
My party was the Ulrich's guys. Skiing was good, but your photos show way better vis that what we had the next day. Here is Tom Janisch near the summit. Can't see the summit? We couldn't either (until there was no more up). We didn't need crampons. Good booting the whole way.
Nice one Jeff!
Is John wearing combat boots? what's with the pant tuck?
Better then tom's choice of touring gear.
Better then tom's choice of touring gear.
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