June 3, 2012, Fryingpan, Goat Island circumnav

Pavel, Dave and I went to the White River Campground with thoughts of Little Tahoma.  We took the White River trail and the moraine trail to access the Fryingpan from the Emmons side.  The new trail is great, they have done a lot of work to put it in where it should be pretty safe from erosion.  Talking to the rangers, they said that continuous skinning to Glacier Basin starts at about 5500 feet.  Please don't ski on the vegetation to get around bare spots, they are also working hard to mitigate user damage.  On the moraine trail, the railing on the Interfork bridge is starting to look a little sad and there is a large washout immediately afterwards.  We started up the moraine but were concerned about getting too high and dropped down a little west of the glacial tarn.  This was a big mistake, we ended up having an alder adventure and still couldn't cross the White River until the terminus of the Emmons.  We booted up the toe of the Emmons briefly and then headed left to the edge of Goat Island Mt.  The skinning began here, as the misting rain turned to big snow flakes.  We quickly climbed into the cloud deck and whiteout conditions, happy that Pavel brought his GPS.  The clouds started thinning in Goat Cirque with glimpses of sun.  Climbing above Meany Crest brought an intro to strong winds and biting spindrift.  About halfway up the Fryingpan, we bailed on going higher as the weather was miserable and the skiing looked less and less promising. 

Starting down began with firm crust, changing to breakable crust, then good turns for a bit, and finally skiing in sticky mush.  We decided to exit via Summerland and were rewarded with snow almost the whole way.  I made two carries and some delicate stepping across three or four other bare patches.  There were two rangers headed down from Summerland as we came by, one skiing and one snowshoeing.  They were great guys, chatting and giving us some good beta.  They even arranged for a ride back to get our car.

I forgot the camera but hopefully Pavel will add some of his pictures.